Basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Having a great visual website does not eliminate the
need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Your web site
may have great optical appeal but search engine spiders
don't care about looks. Search engine spiders want a well-organized
and well-connected web site with rich content and informative
descriptions of each page. Let’s take a good look at some
issues you need to be aware of to assure your web pages
are optimized correctly.
Meta Tags are the first thing a search engine spider
sees when coming into your web page. Always be sure to have
a descriptive title tag unique to that page telling exactly
what someone could expect to find if they visited the page.
Then you will want to have an expanded description tag.
Expand on your title using some similar words but in more
detail. Again, be sure it's unique to that page. Finally,
have a keyword tag that contains in order of importance
the keywords people would search for when looking for your
site and words that are listed in the content text of that
particular page. Try to stay away from a lot of extra meta
tags like Author, Content, etc. unless you really need them.
They sometimes will confuse the search spiders and cause
them to incorrectly list your site.
After looking over your meta tags they will move onto
the first few lines of text on your page. They will look
for similarities between your meta tags and the words used
in these first couple sentences. A good thing to remember
is to always state the page's purpose in this text and or
use some type of titling system at the top of your content.
The first few sentences on the page, however you present
them, should contain some of the exact same words you used
in your meta tags. A search spider will then review the
rest of your content to measure the keyword weight of the
document in reference to your meta keyword tag. Be sure
to use a good ratio of your keywords in your content and
or be sure to reflect the most important words from your
content into your keyword tag.
Once they have looked over one of your pages they will
want to look around the rest of your site by following your
links. Make the links obvious and plentiful to them by giving
more than one way to get to your other pages. First, you
should have your main navigation of text or image links
on the left side or top of your page. Then add a second
list of text links at the very bottom of the page, all in
text only, to mirror what every other main navigation your
site uses. Additionally, you can add a few links spread
around the body of your page either with photos or in the
text of your content.
Lastly, you can add to the search spider's enjoyment
of your web site by adding alternate text into your image
tags. A search spider cannot see what the images are on
your site but it can read the names of them and the alternate
text that you place into the tags. By doing this you are
giving more content for the spider to review as it goes
through your site. The same idea would apply to making text
into images. This is not a good idea. Always try to put
any viewed text for your site into coded text and never
into an image just because it may look better. You will
be taking away content from your web page. A masthead that
needs to be in an image placed next to a company logo works
fine but be sure to use the "alt" attribute in your image
tags.
Having an optimized web page can make a huge difference
in the way search engines list your site over others. If
your web pages are search engine optimized, or SEO, then
your web site will have a huge advantage over your competition.
