Search Engine Optimization Tips

For Web Site Positioning and Site Design

General Web Site Positioning Tips

1. Top search engine positioning requires text! Search engine "spiders" ignore graphics, much of Flash, etc. and read text. For them, text = content. Engines favor straightforward pages: text oriented and without frames. Do not make pages that contain just graphics and Flash. Try to avoid lots of Javascript in the page code (see below). Search engines give high rankings to pages that most designers would consider plain.

Your pages don't have to be plain, but they need to contain text with your important keyword phrases. "Good copywriting is important." Well written pages that also include your keywords will do well in search engines. Good copywriting is both customer and "search engine friendly": It helps your site acheive good rankings and then convert those rankings into sales.

2. Search engines spiders like “newspaper style” pages - pages with “headlines” (headings) containing keyword phrases and “articles” (text).

Search engine rankings depend on body text containing the keyword phrases we are interested in positioning, preferably placed near the beginning (top) of the text. Link text and bold text containing the desired keyword phrases can also aid positioning.

3. Engines give preference to pages that have keyword text near the top of the page (especially the first 100 words or so); therefore, include keywords in your body text as close to the top of the page as possible. If extensive JavaScript and navigation instructions run at the top of the page above the body text, this may reduce the effectiveness of the keywords.

4. A heading tag or other HTML tag containing keyword phrases can be highly effective in obtaining good rankings if placed at the top of the page.

5. Meta tags: the keyword tag has little or no effect on rankings (in fact, none at Google). The description tag is not important in obtaining rankings, but is important because it effects how your page is displayed in the search results. A well written description can turn your successful search result into a click! Meta tags are not “magic” and must be used properly and not abused.

6. Tricks that were once useful in “fooling” search engines, such as “keyword stuffing” and the use of Meta refresh tags are now frowned upon. They can result in a page being penalized in rankings or even banned from the listings on some engines.

7. Frames: In general, search engines spiders skip frames or will read only one of the frames on a page and ignore other frames. This can lead to loss of positioning, or searchers being directed to a URL which is a page fragment, and not the entire page.

8. It is important for the pages on your web site to be linked to one another, especially the home page. This ensures that the spider “sees” every page.

A site map containing keyword based text links is an excellent way to ensure that the engine spiders and indexes every page of the site.

9. Incoming links from reputable sites will boost both rankings from search engines and traffic from other types of sites.

10. Provide your site visitors with reasons to explore your site and link to it: Include information such as background articles about your site and its products that isn't sales oriented: "How to"; "All about"; and FAQ pages are easy ways to do this. Including "objective" information increases the credibility of your site and results in both more visitors and more sales.

Specific Tips  - Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

1. The page title should always appear immediately following the opening HEAD tag and should include one or two or the most desired keywords phrases. Nothing should be written between the opening HEAD tag and the TITLE. The TITLE should be the first code read by the SE spider.

2. As much as possible, text should be written as text, not as graphics. Body text, headings, and link text including keywords are all valuable in improving rankings.

Example: whenever possible use actual text or a heading tag instead of a graphic containing the same text. For example, in a site about cheap accommodations, pages should have text (headings) near the top of the page saying things like “Hotels for Cheap” or “Las Vegas Accommodations for Cheap” and not just graphic elements containing the same information: graphics are ignored by SE spiders.

3. If the appearance of heading tags is not considered desirable, they can be used and their appearance controlled by the designer through the use of CSS. In this way, the spider will still read the heading as a text (not graphic) element.

Example: With CSS, you can specify that the browser will render text in the H1 tag any way you please: You can change any of the variables - font size, type, and color - as you see fit. This is good for positioning but gives you better control of your page's appearance.

4. Scripts: If scripts must be used, it is best not to write them on the page itself, but to put the script contents in a remote .js file elsewhere on the site and reference them as a source in the place you want them to appear. If you use drop-down or fly-out menus using JavaScript, repeat the content in a <no script> tag so that the search engines can read the content.

Again, thse tips are more useful if you have keywords near the beginning of the body text and your page appears focussed around the keywords.

5. It is helpful to use domain names that contain keywords: Example: http://newyork-hotels.com for a “new york hotels” site. Subdomains can also be effective: http://newyork.hotels.com at the "hotels.com" site. But note: recent evidence shows that extensive use of keywords in domain and page names can actually hurt rankings - so don't use multiple keywords with several hyphens in a domain name. Finally, remember - well written pages with relevant keyword content are much more important than page and domain names.

6. If frames are necessary, the NO FRAMES tag can be used to good effect. Any text or other elements you want the SE spider to read can be placed between the NO FRAMES tags and will be considered when the algorithm ranks the page in question. Very few surfers today use browsers that cannot read frames, so virtually no one (except the SE spiders) will see and read the content between the tags.

7. Machine generated or identical pages can damage rankings or even result in sites being banned at some engines. Do not generate multiple pages having the same content and design, with only one or two changes between the pages. Spiders are now programmed to look for this and consider such pages" to be “spam”. This does not mean that pages can’t have identical design elements, but they must have substantial content differences between them to avoid being considered spam.

8. Many search engine spiders reject or have difficulty following dynamically generated pages. If the URL contains several “?” ; a “%”; "-id" or similar characters, it may not be crawled or indexed. This is because robots are worried about getting caught in what they call “robot traps” with no end to the number of links a program generates. In any case, if the spider does crawl the page it may not follow the links there to other pages on your site.

In these pages it is especially important to use title, head, meta, and other tags properly, so that the spider will at least read them and get some idea of the keyword content of the page. If your site can be programmed so that pages can be given URL’s with very few (or without) these problematic elements it is highly preferable.

A work around is to use static HTML “pointer pages” (such as a site map) with links to the target pages; or you can build static versions of the generated pages that the spiders can read and will index. There are more sophisticated ways of getting around this problem that are too complex to go into here.

9. Links to your domain from other sites with similar content and themes (not just random links) are a major element in the ranking algorithm of many engines. If you own more than one site, it is helpful to link them. We can run a professionally organized link campaign that can bring you large increases in traffic.

10. If you have questions or would like to know more, contact us.