Search Engine Optimization Tips
Although there are many tutorials about SEO techniques online at this
time, Jezsta's SEO Consultants would like to list what is the most important and
easiest to do.
We will start with the top 5 most important SEO Techniques.
- Good Titles
- Content
- Use Headings
- Good Navigation
- Use Alternate Text for Images
Using Good Titles for Web Pages
Search
engine indices use the titles of web pages in their SERPs (in case you are coming from an outside link this means
search engine results pages). Have you ever picked up a book with a
boring title? Think about it, then why would someone click on a link with a
boring title? Your title should be what your page is about. If you have a
website name that you are trying to brand then yes use it, but place it closer to the end of
the title element. Never use untitled, New Page 1, or the just website domain name,
or anything similar. These are
bad practices and there are a few web designers on the internet that we have
seen use web page titles like the ones mentioned. Sometime it is better to not
even mention the business name as that is mentioned in your content anyway.
Please refer to the example image above right, which can be enlarged to a larger image. Notice the first result; this is an example of a good title. You immediately know what the site is about just from the title. Guess what? So will a search engine robot. First impressions are the key to gaining targeted traffic. So spamming the titles with keywords over a few times will put some people off.
Web Pages Need Content
A website needs content of course. The main reason any visitor will come to a web site will because of the information or products on it. Your home page or index page need to have a good explanation of what your website is about. This not only welcomes the internet visitors to your website, but introduces the website and what type products the website offers to them. They should know from that web page if they are indeed at the right place or not.
Web page content should also be written correctly. Not spamming to where it sounds real funny with keywords mentioned too many times. They should be appealing to the visitor enticing them to read more. Filling your WebPages with good keyword rich content helps your pages to be found easier. Good descriptions of your products is essential to get the pages with products to be found which will end up being keyword rich content.
Using Headings on Web Pages
The above "Using Headings on Web Pages" is a heading. This stands out to you and the search engine robots. What makes it a heading is more than just the changing the font characteristics. In the HTML code it will look like this <h2>Using Headings on Web Pages</h2>. This is how the search engine robots see that it is of some importance. Headings are <h1> to <h6>. <h1> would be the most important of the headings and would be what the most important phrase you would want to stand out on the webpage.
Use Good Navigational Links
Before explaining the importance of having good navigational links on your website, it is also important to explain about the WWW and links. The internet is made of links, a web of course. If you think about it you can see how the name came about. Internet and Web if you could visualize it, it would look like a netting or a spider web. Even some of the search engine robots or crawlers are called spiders.
With all the links going to and from this is how your web pages are found. You need links for your website to be found! There is no need for submission to the major search engines. That's right no need to submit your website to a search engine.
Link Building - Gaining Links - Read our article to find out more!
Now how many of you have paid for search engine submissions? Not only that how many of you have paid for being submitted to 300 search engines or something similar to that amount? You would be surprised how many people can be persuaded to fall for this.
Some of you have probably even used a free submission with places like Addme. Addme has a high Google PageRank™ just because of all those links from the home pages the site receives from all those unsuspecting innocent website owners. They claim to submit to hundreds of search engines with the paid submissions. The search engines you should be concerned with are the top 3. Google, MSN, and Yahoo are the top 3. Most of the others are powered by one of these or use all of these for their results.
The main point is you have links so your website will be found. Once found you need all of your pages in your site to be found and crawled by the robots. This of course means it is essential to guide the robots to all of your important web pages with links. The links are like a tour guide map, pointing the crawler to places on your site and other places as well to substantiate your website and continuing to weave the web.
Using Alternate Text for Images
Alternate Text or Alt Text as is referred to by SEO advisors and professionals can help add more content to your site. Think of it like a blind person looking at the webpage. You have this great looking logo that states SEO -Tips that the robots can not see. A computer is a machine that can not see and needs to know what the images are. They are programmed to see images by way of reading codes and text. It is like the headings that need to be stated in the HTML coding as explained earlier. When you mouse over or run the mouse curser over the image you will see the text pop up in some browsers. This is also 508 compliance for the disabled internet viewers who rely on this for accessiblity.
When we state that Alt Text can add content, we don't mean to keyword stuff it. That is spam and shouldn't be done. We know there are quite a few websites out there that stuff these attributes, don't be persuaded to do it.
More to SEO
There is more to SEO than these 5 important SEO techniques and at a later
date we will share them with you. We also have more tips on our
SEO Blog. (blog is down for a bit, got hacked
with it being a WordPress old version). A website can be changed and new data added
from time to time. Basically this too is a SEO technique; it keeps the robots
coming as they notice the website changing. When websites change
content frequently it
encourages the robots to crawl more frequently.
To find out a little bit more: The Good -
The Bad - The Just Plain Ugly SEOs - Ethical SEO -
To Blog Or Not
To Blog