Hello to all, just thought it would be a nice addition to the Internet marketing forum. It is a guide (article/tutorial/whatever you like to call it) on how to optimise your website's content for better search engine rankings. Anything missed in this guide, add it as a reply.
If you don't want to spend money on website marketing, or if you can't afford it, it is your best option! And believe me, it will reward your efforts (maybe not tommorow, but certainly in a few months time.)
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Probably the most important aspect of search engine optimisation (SEO) is your web site's content. Providing unique content and making it accessible to the search engines is the key here. Search engines are hungry for textual content. Textual content in contrast to graphics containing the content is a vital difference.
Google for example takes into account more than 100 factors in order to determine each web site's PageRank. An interesting read is Google's Technology overview. However since trade secrets are involved, you will only find general guidelines there.
Choosing the right keywords
The ultimate goal for a successful optimisation is to increase ranking and to make search engines send targetted visitors to the web site. The most important factor is link popularity. However the content of the web site is quite important as well. Consider a web site selling printer consumables. If it ranks high for the keyword "printers" and ranks low for "printer consumables", this results in the wrong traffic being sent to this web site from the search engines.
Therefore it is very important to choose the right keywords for the web site. Visit our free web marketing tools page and start using the keyword suggestion tools available, in order to determine which keywords are best for this site.
After the right keywords are selected, all important "entry" pages must be optimised for those keywords. Be carefull not to overuse your important keywords in each page, as this will get your site penalised for keywords spamming.
The general rule is to use the keywords once in the title of the page, once in the meta keywords and description tags, once in the first headline and once in the first paragraph of each page. Do not use the keywords more than 6-7 times in a single page as this will get the web site penalised. Read further for more information on the important HTML elements for search engine optimisation.
Web site Architecture review
If your web site employ's Flash content, mostly graphic content, frames, Javascript navigation menus, dynamic content with session ID's embedded in the URLs and very little HTML text content, you just make it hard for search engine robots to understand and properly spider your web site's content.This can result into getting penalised and also making it impossible to get qualified traffic from the search engines.
Pay attention on how your content is organised. Categorise the content into "logical" sections and distribute the content into the relevant sections. You might think that this is part of the web design process, where in fact it is viable for search engine optimisation.
Important HTML tags for the search engines
The Title tag:
Search engines give importance to the Title tag of the page. Your two most important keywords or keyphrases should be included there. The top keyword you are targetting for this page should be as close as possible to the beggining of the title. If you want to include your web site's or company's name, add it at the end.
The Meta Desctiption tag:
Most search engines tend to ignore the description and keywords meta tags. However there are still some engines which take them into account and many engines use the description on the search results page. Put some effort to make it keyword rich and most importantly make it enticing for web searchers.
The Meta Keywords tag:
This tag is ignored by nearly all search engines. However include it with your most important keywords.
Content considerations
It is very important to repeat your important keywords within the content. The most important elements in terms of search engine optimisation are the first heading of your web site and the first paragraph. Try to include as many important keywords as possible in these two elements.
As mentioned above, it is important to include your important keywords in the first heading and the first paragraph. But do not excessively repeat the keywords as this will get you penalised. All heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) are important in terms of search engines. Bold and emphasised text is also important to include your keywords.
When inserting images to your content, always use the ALT tag which is addressed for people with disabilities and text only browsers. Include your keywords there as much as possible. File and directory names are also quite important and they should use your keywords as much as possible.
Always use the keyword density analysers to determine if some of your important keywords are excessively used or if they are less frequently used. Make changes according to your observations. Including links to external web sites that complement your content will also give you a small boost in the search engines.
Using dirty marketing techniques, such as featuring content which is not visible to your visitors but is visible to the robots (i.e.: text with the same colour as the background) will get your web site severely penalised. Refrain from using such tactics. They will only hurt your web site.
Concluding, search engines are always looking for ways to improve. All that matters to them is to provide quality and relevant web sites to the web searchers. Having good quality and unique text-rich content is what they consider to be the best option for their users.
Give more importance to the content of your web site and how it is presented to your visitors and less on search engine optimisation. Having good quality content will also entice your visitors to stay on your web site.
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