Search Engine Optimisation
In today's online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important. This guide follows Google guidelines
In today's online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important. This guide follows Google guidelines
Finding the right keywords to place in your tags requires
good research and an indepth knowledge on how customers will find
your site; using the wrong keywords could make your Search Engine
Optimisation a complete waste of time. At Design365 we can look
at specific keywords you my or may not want to use and also give
you advice on how to find other words you may not have considered.
Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still offer a reasonable
search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should
also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site, in other
words, the more specific you are to your product or service the
better the results.
There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings, which the guys at Google often weigh differently. This is known as the Google algorithm and is possibly the world's best kept secret. However, here are a number of those factors and what you can do to increase your chances of success.
The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. There are some significant changes you can make to your title tags such as placement of your target phrase and identifying a different title tag for each individual page.
To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. Try a search for a rather broad term "hotel" and see that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan shows that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.
To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. Try a search for a rather broad term "hotel" and see that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan shows that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.
The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. However, good use of this line may be better served as an advert as opposed to some illogical title text as this is the line people will read when reviewing which site to click on.
When it comes to Google this tag is useless and won't influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilise a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.
Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings. However, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings.
This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to each another and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.
This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to each another and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.
The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible. Also create internal links for these phrases. Remember CONTENT IS KING when it comes to Google searches.
Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.
To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar.
To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar.
There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From our experience, yes, there is value here, although nothing like it was several years ago.
If you are just starting in the online world and are still contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.
While having a keyword located within your domain can offer some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.
If you are just starting in the online world and are still contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.
While having a keyword located within your domain can offer some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.
Using keywords for specific page URL's can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton:
MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html
MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html
Placement of target phrases within heading tags helps to establish the importance of those given phrases. That said, don't over do or abuse it. Only place target phrases within a heading tag if it makes sense to do so, and don't flood a page with numerous tags. Heading tags are not as critical as they once were, but still a good contribution to a well optimized page.
This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.
While a link that simply states "click here" or "www.domainname.com" does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use "discount hotels" as its anchor.
While a link that simply states "click here" or "www.domainname.com" does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use "discount hotels" as its anchor.
While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.
Image Alt text should always be short, to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.
Image Alt text should always be short, to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.
These are links that are found mid-sentence or mid-paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid-paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.
It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully accessible to the search engines spiders. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google's ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website. I would also suggest you add a google XML sitemap to aid this considerably.