There is an overflow of “to dos” and “how tos” on SEO these days. Somehow, I always feel that these posts from the experts or the gurus are primarily addressed to either a web designer or a search marketing expert. They are great posts – no doubts about it, but somehow doesn’t address the common folks- the business owner or that custom jewelry designer or even the painter/artist/ financial expert or even the lawyer who has a great website or so they think but just don’t know how to best get themselves found by their target audience without spending tons of dollars.
Here’s something I always share with my clients prior to kicking off a discussion on SEO. Think of Search Engines as non-intelligent ( read stupid) middle men . You have to keep them happy and at the same time provide a very simple version of your products & services to have them take it to your users. Any false move or complicated offerings and you fall out of favor.
Also, the sole purpose of your website’s SEO is to have your target audience find you and once they do, to provide them with relevant information. Please never tie in SEO with attaining the no. 1 rank in Google. That is one big wrong assumption you’ll ever make. During the process of SEO, if you manage to get to the top, that’ll be sweet . But if you follow the basic SEO principles, there is no reason for you to not get into the first page for any relevant search.
So here’s a few simple ways to serve your offering to your middlemen ( read Search Engines) in order to have them take your website to your target audience.
1. PAGE TITLES– A page title tells the user but more importantly the Search Engine, in a few words what the website is all about. Here’s an example of how a title is served for a website ( www.pinkribbon.com) for a search against “pink ribbon”. Ideally, one should always create a unique title for each page on their site. Also titles should be brief & very relevant to the business.
Here’s how your designer will build your title code:
<title>Pink Ribbon (Official Website) International Breast Cancer Awareness and Funding</title>
Now, notice how the page title is served. Very long page titles tend to get cropped off. It’s always optimal to use between 7-9 words for page titles.
2.URLs – An URL is your web address. www.mycompany.com is your home page url and then for different pages you have an extension of your home page url . For example www.mycompany.com/product1.htm is the url for your first product and www.mycompany.com/aboutus.htm is the url for the about us page.
- My golden rule – keep your url simple & logical, something which the users can memorize after looking at it once.
- Use words in your url instead of number or in other words instead of www.mycompany.com/ page1.htm , use www. mycompany.com/seo-basics.htm and make it relevant to the information provided on the page.
- Use one version of an url to reach any page. If you find users are using different urls to reach the same page on your website, have your web designer set up a what is called 301 redirect to your preferred url. That way all urls pointing to the same content get redirected to just 1 master url that you think is the most relevant to that page.
3. WRITE UNIQUE DESCRIPTIONS FOR EACH PAGE ON YOUR WEBSITE
Let’s first look at how page descriptions appear to your audience when they search for you. The text under the title , known in the technical world as “snippet” is basically the description of the page of your website that is served against a query. In this case the query was “ Spain Vacation”.
And here’s the code for it that you’ll have your web designer build. Note, how too long a description tends to get cropped off. Once more, keep your descriptions simple, short & relevant to the page.
<meta name="description" content="Spain holiday rentals.
Villas, apartments and country homes for rent in Spain
.Spain holiday lettings in Spanish holiday homes in
Spanish villas in Spain holiday Accommodation
for rent in Malaga,Alicante,Barcelona,Costa del
Sol,Costa Blanca,Costa Brava and mallorca" />
4. EASY NAVIGATION –
- Have a text based navigation for your users. Avoid creating complex navigation links like linking every page to every other page on the website.
- It’ s a good idea to control navigation from page to page using text links instead of images. Avoid website navigation through images, animations or drop down menus. Sometimes search engines do not handle flash or javascript very well. A simple sitemap page with links to all of the pages on your site is very useful.
- Have your website designers create “an XML Sitemap File” for your site. The XML sitemap file will help to ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site. Please make sure there are no broken links on your sitemap. Create a breadcrumb navigation.
- A breadcrumb navigation is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to see the path of navigation and quickly navigate back to a previous section or the home page. Here’s how a bread crumb navigation looks like
- Customized error page – Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn’t exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. It’s called a “ 404 error “.Having a custom 404 page that directs users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user’s experience. Try & use humor for the 404 error page. Somehow humor helps to heal any bruised feelings. Here are 100 ideas on funny & unusual 404 error pages.
5. PROMOTE YOUR WEBSITE
- Paid search is the SEO marketing option over which you have the most control. Though by no means it’s a requirement for good SEO , it’s an attractive option to have available to you. The vast majority of businesses do best when they use a holistic approach to SEO, combining elements of organic and paid search with a healthy dose of good writing & usability.
- Do not forget your offline promotions – your print collaterals, business cards , any other printed mailings should always have your web URL printed.
- Social media – utilize the social media engagement opportunities. Get into twitter, facebook and blogs. A few words of caution though :
i. Do not publicize everything & anything that’s happening at your end. Feed quality updates on these forums. It’s easy to get lost.
ii. Do not do it for the sake of doing it. Jump in only if you can sustain the inertia. It’s nothing worse than a twitter page with no updates in 6 months or a blog with no entries in the last year maybe. I see that happening with a lot of companies and it makes me very nervous.
6. CONTENT IS KING – The entire process of web search is text based. The search engines care for how much text you have on your site, how it’s formatted & of course how relevant it is to your business goals and the product on that page. Your site’s text needs to be compelling, clear, focused and directed to your users. It also needs to be formatted so that the search engines can read it. Designing your site around your visitors’ needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.
7. KEYWORD SELECTION & PLACEMENT IS CRITICAL. It works when used for usability purpose over the entire site rather than stuffing it in your title or page description. There are multitude of free keyword tools available to help you select the relevant keywords for your target audience. Keep them in mind when creating or revising your content. I am a huge fan of Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool.
8. LINKS PLAY A CRUCIAL ROLE – Search Engines are hugely fond of links. Links that exist on your website can be broken down as Internal links –are how you connect different sections of your web site. External links – where you connect to contents in other websites.For both cases, use quality anchor text to link the content. An anchor text should provide some information on what the link is all about. Avoid using texts like “ click here” , “click this page” or “click this article”.
Here’s how anchor text is built by your designers . Please note, how a good anchor text has a phrase related to the content it’s linking to.
<a href=”http://mycompany.com/seo-basics.htm”> Here are the SEO basics </a>
9. OPTIMIZE THE IMAGES ON YOUR WEB SITE :
Images like text needs to be optimized for Search Engines & better user experience. Here’s a check list for the right image usage in your website:
-
- Make sure all images on your website have not only a distinct name but an alt tag . The “alt” tag allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason. If a user is viewing your site on a browser that doesn’t support images, the contents of the alt attribute provide information about the picture.
- Make sure your web designer use brief, but descriptive filenames and alt text. Avoid using file names like pic1.jpg or image1.gif. Describe them wherever possible. Same with alt tags. Use short & descriptive tags. Do not stuff keywords in your tags or image file names.
10. MEASURE YOUR EFFORTS– I am a big fan of measurement. Try to get insights into how users reach and behave on your site. Use a free tool like Google Analytics to
• Discover the most popular content on your site
• Measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site
Here’s a post I wrote on my blog on how your business goals should be aligned with insights drawn from your web analytics.
Search engines deal with every page individually. So each landing page will need to be optimized for overall optimization of your site. However, just make sure you don’t go too crazy with this strategy, or it will have the reverse effect and get flagged as spam. Keep in mind that moderation is always good when it comes to SEO!
Does this help you to get started? Do you monitor your results? How has your optimization affected your business goals? Please share it with us.
Till then,
Happy Optimizing!
-Bibi
overheard. Really?? Interactive?? The ipads weren’t for food or ambience review (both of which were great). It also didn’t allow any brand engagement. We were willing to check out their facebook page and check-in using facebook places /foursquare, provided we got some consumer recognition (read-deals). None of those were possible. Yet this huge investment was made in the name of technology. What do we classify this as? Irrelevance or incompetency? I wonder if they stopped to asked themselves “how can we make this work” before embarking on embracing the coolness.
Ittadi -The Etc's of life 