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Get Your Web Site Pages to Rank Higher
in Search Engine Listings
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Friendly, Personal Service and Advice to Web Site Builders
Some Do's and Don'ts of Search Engine Optimisation
◊◊◊ Learn what SEO can do for your website and keep at it. Search engine algorithms are continually changing. Keep up to date with current trends and apply what you know to optimise all the pages of your web site.
◊◊◊ If you don't have SEO or web site design skills, work with someone who does. Even the smallest websites can benefit from the simplest optimisation efforts to keep them effective.
◊◊◊ Plan your web site pages with search engine optimisation in mind. Write content for your users. Think about what they want to hear and see. Build in optimisation at the design stage. There's no point creating a great looking web site that nobody ever sees because it never comes high enough up in the search engine results.
◊◊◊ Write about your product or service and make a list of the relevant keywords or phrases. Make sure you include the main keywords 4 or 5 times in your text. These not only explain what you are selling to potential customers but, properly inserted throughout the HTML and content of your page, keywords are what search engines use to judge the relevance of your pages to their users' search criteria.
◊◊◊ Use META tags wisely in your HTML code. Learn how search engines use them when they spider your site.
◊◊◊ Your TITLE meta tag should contain the wording you want to see as a heading to your search engine results listing. It must be both eye-catching and informative to draw the reader to click on the link to your web page. But don't go over the top with unnecessary gimmicks or superlatives. Ideally about 40-60 characters long, your title should contain relevant keywords and summarize the page content.
◊◊◊ Your DESCRIPTION meta tag contains the text you want to see under the TITLE on your search results. Ideally about 80-100 characters long, the description should also contain keywords relevant to the page being linked to and should enlarge on the message summarized in the title.
◊◊◊ The KEYWORDS meta tag should be used sparingly. Do not overload it with keywords and phrases that do not appear in your title/description meta tags, or the text content of your page. But I suggest you DO include keywords and phrases that are relevant. Search engines cross check meta tags with content and don't take kindly to spamming. Having said that, some experts think the keywords tag is no longer of much consequence.
◊◊◊ HEADING tags H1 to H6, particularly H1, the boldest, are also used by search engines to judge where keywords and phrases are emphasized and add structure to your web page. Care should be taken to use the tags in descending size order, ie., H1 followed by H2 and so on.
◊◊◊ BOLD text used to highlight some keywords in your text content, where appropriate, also helps search engines to evaluate their relevance.
◊◊◊ Use keywords in ANCHOR text when building links, both internal and external. Anchor text tells search engine spiders what the page or site you are linking to is about. Don't use "Click Here" for links. It tells the spiders nothing.
◊◊◊ Use Reciprocal links where possible, ie., build up links to web sites, relevant to your business, which themselves have links back to your site. Some search engines use these links to judge the popularity of your site and award a page rank, which also helps to get your site further up the search result listings. However, don't just go out and buy irrelevant links from other webmasters to try to get a higher page rank. Search engines consider this spamming and it could do you more harm than good.
◊◊◊ Start a Blog relevant to your products or services and participate with other bloggers by reading and commenting on their posts. Use your web site URL as part of your blog signature, but be discreet. Don't SPAM! Search engines also spider blogs and love them because of the constant supply of fresh material.
◊◊◊ Submit your URL to the prominent, well known search engines if you like, but the important ones will find you anyway providing your web site has interesting content and is properly optimised. However, don't waste your time and money auto-submitting to 1000's of search engines and directories in the hope of blasting your way to the top of the results with a poor web site. All the decent search engines and directories want to build on their integrity by only sending their users to sites which are proven to be relevant, informative, and content-rich.
◊◊◊ Make sure your web site is crawlable. Use a robots.txt file to disallow spiders from areas of your site you don't want them to go. Make sure your navigation links all work properly and are not too convoluted.
◊◊◊ If you must use Flash etc., keep it simple. Some users will not think you are clever. They may quickly tire of your animations while waiting for some relevant content, and go elsewhere for their information. Don't overdo your graphics, apart from irritating users, search engine spiders may have difficulty following navigation. Remember, keywords that are an integral part of graphics images are not picked up by the spiders.
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