Skip to main content

Website Search Engine Friendly Basics

I had a three meetings today and all of them were to discuss 3 websites that were not performing and even not showing up for their company names. I don't know how many times I have said just how much more difficult it is to inherit a website than to create one from the bottom up. And yet clients expect to pay less for services rendered for Website RE-development.

When creating a website for business purposes it would be wise to ask your webmaster if you can insert these very important parameters into EACH page of your website:

1. Page Title: If you have to do ONE thing right, it would be your page title. The page title is whats located on the very top of your browser. Keep your title to 65 characters. Ensure that the keyword or phrase that you are targeting fits nicely in the page title without making it unreadable.

2. Meta description tags: Have you ever wondered about where the displayed text right under your website address comes from? Hello? This is actually the text that users will click on or ignore. Keep your descriptions brief with as much sensible use of the keyword you are targeting. There are other directories that SE's (specifically google) use to describe your site - dmoz being "it"- either way, whichever description describes your websiteis what the SE's will use.

3. h1 to h6 tags: Ok so maybe you won't use all the h tags but use atleast one to give credence to your page title.

4. alt tags: the text here actually replaces the image when search engines read your content. Make sure each photo has a proper tag. Always. And YES - for every single photo. This also adds to your keyword density so make it smart.

5. Content: Make sure your pages can accommodate at the very minimum 300 words and that the Search Engines can read your text. If your website has too little, it will not help you in achieving much in the SERPs. Its ok if it has more than 300 words but don't bore your readers. There is a fine line between creating a site for SE's and your users. Make sure you don't cross it.

These parameters need to be readable by the Search Engine spiders - they cannot read javascript or flash.

If you create your website using a Joomla CMS then you are on the right track.

I am reminded by a the K.I.S.S. principle here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cayman SEO: Update on Changing to neutral Top Level Domains (TLD)

Just a very quick update on TLD's that address the geo targeting tool that Google released, or is it unleashed.  One of our internal website www.cayman4rent.ky already had a page rank of 3 and was very visible for online searches for most rental keywords in the Cayman Islands and it its domain age was not even 1 year old.  When google inserted the fixed geo-targeting location on Web Master Tools it was a wake up call of sorts. I quickly read up on what this could possible mean to the .ky and realized very quickly that Google was going to remove the .ky from its US data centres.  I wrote a blog regarding TLDs back in February and you can read it here .  On that blog I showed the fact that www.cayman4rent.ky was showing up for major keywords such as "grand cayman rentals" in the Cayman Islands but it was not showing up for the same keyword in the United States.  I was crushed really because it mean that I would have to give it a neutral TLD such as a .com for it...

EASY TIPS on Improving your Online Presence

How blogging can improve your online presence I have encouraged a lot of my clients in the Cayman Islands to start blogging. I have even gone through the motion of showing some of them how to blog, where to blog and why. I am providing a bullet point outline of the importance of blogging and am hoping that even the lazy reader will find this interesting if not empowering. Interesting NOTE: Blog is short for ‘Web logs’ Why YOU should blog If you have a business; YOU should blog because: -blogging is a formidable online marketing tool -the search engines easily index blogs because it is text heavy versus websites that are sometimes more graphically intensive -blogging is as easy as sending email, except in this case you are sending an email to many -blogs can easily be integrated into your website so even if you don’t want to pay to maintain your website, it is still getting new content from your blog -blogs enable your readers to connect with you on a more personal level -blogging ca...

Cayman SEO NEWS: Unethical SEO practices by NETCLUES!

I am a very passionate person when it comes to work and sure, most of the time I don't have time to moderate comments on my blog. Not that there is alot of them mind you, but because I know some people are trying to ride on the link popularity of my blog caymanseo.blogspot.com, which has a pagerank of 4/10 - and because I know how difficult breaks can be - I don't mind and sometimes approve them. What I do mind is when a competing company does it. So my blog is decidedly no. 1 for most if not all the keywords relating to SEO and/or Internet Marketing in the Cayman Islands. Of course it is - I have applied alot of what I know about optimization to my blog. So it really makes me so angry that a competing company would even dare post a link back to their blog hoping to ride on my coat-tails. You should have made a comment at the very least and maybe I would have let it pass but to blatantly put a link back... thats just plain LAZY. Its embarrasing really. I would hate ...