About SEO
Search Engine Optimization is important if you want your website to be visible on the Internet
No one is quite sure how the search engine robots trawl websites or what algorithms they are using at any one time. For search engines such as Google, it’s a movable feast, so the best approach to improving SEO (search engine optimisation) is to use common sense: stay on message on any one page use clear, concise writing, and metatag appropriately. In other words, do the right thing.
In June 2010, Google launched a new algorithm called ‘Caffeine’ which basically uses the coffee concept – Caffeine gives a boost to fresh, new web content. There is some debate on how Caffeine may have positive and negative effects on SERP (search engine results pages) for existing websites.
According to the official Google blog, it means that Google can search recently added content to existing websites faster.
With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before — no matter when or where it was published (Official Google blog, 8 June 2010).
Read the entire article about how Caffeine works on The Official Google Blog.
1 Use WWW (world wide web) standards
These are the standards for the world wide web developed years ago to ensure everyone, including sight impaired people, can access information on websites. Adhering to these standards is the best thing you can do to improve your SEO.
Here’s an example: if you upload an image, make sure the title of the image reflects what the image is. Computers can ‘read’ the images using the title of the image so that sight impaired people can get an idea of what that image is. IMG_0356.jpg as a title gives no clues whatsoever. Naming the image as ‘Sydney Harbour Bridge at dawn’ tells sight-impaired people and SEO robots what the image is about.
Don’t get tricky just do the right thing. Make sure content is clearly written and images are explained in the title and in metadata..
2 Use valid HTML and XHTML coding
Part of the standards for a website that will improve SEO is developing your website using valid XHTML and HTML.
For example, an image containing important text is not as efficient as having an image with the text in HTML because it is HTML text that the search engine robots read.
In addition, keep the coding as simple as possible. Use key words in coding rather than /234#TYP_sj. Better to use words that reflect the content on the page: ’services_and_products’.
At BWD, we build websites using Wordpress and other open-source software with valid HTML coding. Our websites have CSS (cascading style sheets), the use of which helps search engines identify the most important information on a webpage. For example, content in Heading 1 style is given more weight in search engine indexing than a Heading 3 and information at the top of the page is also seen as more important than content further down the page.
3 Create quality links
Having quality internal links that connect the web visitor to other relevant information and pages in your website and having quality reciprocal links to external websites is also a significant for boosting to your SEO. This is why you often see a dedicated ‘Links’ page on many websites. Another way to establish incoming links is to sign up for free or paid directories and programs such Google Places and on social networking websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
How to improve incoming links on your website
Here’s something else that will encourage incoming links. Continually add quality, relevant and valuable content for people interested in your product or service which will help you develop links from other websites and blogs pointing back to your ‘quality’ information on your website
Additional tip: When linking content to other webpages in your website, use actual text on your webpage for the hyperlink rather than the words ‘click here’ or ‘read more’.
Links between webpages on your website
It is easy to make the internal links yourself especially if your website is using a content management system such as Wordpress – one of the open source systems used for building Balmain Website Design client websites.
4 Get the metatagging right
It is very important to make sure the meta title element of a webpage and the descriptive metadata tell the story of the page. The title of a webpage can be the heading 1 on the page. Descriptive metadata is used by search engines as the summary for your listing on their search engine results page (SERP) so getting this right is important. Remember, you are trying to attract people to come to your website so well written descriptive metadata is important.
Don’t underestimate the name in your URL. Your URL is the first level of determination for search engines. If you area real estate business, having the words ‘real estate’ in the URL will put you ahead of the competition.
5 Don’t forget keywords despite their fall from grace
Using keywords strategically in your content for any one webpage are not as important as they once used to be for SEO. It used to be: ‘content is King’. No longer.
In saying this, maintaining a strong focus on one subject per page and identifying which keywords are searched more often for that subject should not be underestimated. Staying on message on any page helps maintain interest of the web visitor – something that should not be underestimated.
6 Make sure your site is accessible
Make your website as accessible as possible as this makes it easy for SEO robots to crawl your website more efficiently. Using simple and relevant words rather than symbols in HTML for your website and metatagging images and pages correctly helps to keep your website accessible for disabled and able-bodied people. We can’t stress the relevance of this enough!
Tip: Having an xml sitemap or a ‘human’ sitemap (one that humans can read and understand) will help shorten the time that search robots crawl all the content on your website so make sure you include a xml sitemap on your new website.
7 Whatever you do, avoid duplicating content
Duplicated content is a big no no. Search engines identify one URL for each piece of content and filter out all the others so do not duplicate content from one page to another on your website.
How Balmain Website Designs can help you improve SEO on your website
At Balmain Website Designs, we build websites that take account of SEO and make sure that your website is getting the maximum advantage of getting to page one of Google. All our websites have a human sitemap, include All in one SEO and come with a management manual that explains how to do continuous SEO improvement.
Contact Balmain Website Designs today for a free appraisal of how we can improve your website’s SEO.
Read more about search engine optimisation.