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Site Optimization
Submitted by gc on Mon, 02/18/2013 - 21:07
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Once you have decided on your targeted search terms you can set down to optimize your site for the same. The important thing to note here is that the optimization should proceed both with the search engine and usability aspects in mind. The best optimize site should rank favorably both with the search engine, as well as the customers visiting the site. The basic principle of site optimization is that the search engine should be able to find your targeted search terms at specific places which the search engine deems to accurately reflect the content of your site. |
Additionally, your targeted search terms should appear frequently in the informative content that your site provides. However, be careful to not overdo it to the extent that it aversely affects the usability and comprehension of your site.
One particularly practice that you should do well to avoid is of increasing the frequency of targeted search terms in a web site by adding numerous repetitions of the terms with the same color as the background color of the site. This renders them invisible to the human visitors to your site but are read by the search engine. However, this is considered spamming by quite a few search engines(including Google) and they have devised algorithms which check for such techniques and consequently completely bar such sites from their rankings.
Site-optimization for your targeted search terms should be done from the ground up - from when you are deciding on the content of your web site to the time you actually design your page and put links to related pages. You will require knowledge of basic HTML skills to understand the following techniques that you should use for site optimization.
- Include your targeted search terms in the title tag of your web pages. This is also important because search engines are going to display the Title tag while they are displaying the results of a search. Additionally, the heading of your index page should also contain the targeted search term. The title tag resides inside the headtag in your html script like this:
<head>
<title>SEO Tutorial </title>
</head> - Try to put your targeted search terms in the alt text in figures and images. Alt text is used as a placeholder in browsers which cannot display images, consequently this is also a good usability guideline. Additionally, alttext is also used by search engines to understand the context of your web page. For ex. the img tag for the image embedded earlier in this tutorial will look like the following with the alt value filled in.
<img src="google-suggest-seo-tutorial.GIF" alt="Google Suggest Results for SEO Tutorial" width="594" height="361" border="1" align="absmiddle">
- Try to wrap your hyperlinks around your targeted search terms (text in hyperlinks is valued higher by Google so take advantage of it). So for example if I am linking to a Directory of Search Engines in someSearchEngine.com site, the way to do that in html code is like:
<a href="SearchEngine.com"> Directory of Search Engines</a>, rather than
Directory of Search Engines at <a href="SearchEngine.com">SearchEngine.com</a> - Use the title attribute to describe your html links. Additionally, you should try to include your targeted search term also in your title attribute. Adding a title attribute to a link results in a small pop-up tag which appears when one hovers the mouse pointer over the link. The tag contains the text entered in the title attribute.
- For example move your mouse over this link:'SEO Tutorial'. It is produced by the following HTML code:
<a href="seo.htm" title="Search Engine Optimization Tutorial"> SEO Tutorial </a>
- Make sure that your URL, file names and directory names are descriptive and most of them contain your targeted search term. The most important of these is your URL which should almost necessarily contain your targeted search term.
- Search engines love lots of informative content. Your web site should have a high content to HTML Ratio. Also make sure that as many sentences as possible contain the targeted keyword. However, don't overdo it and risk the comprehension of your text.
- Don't waste your time on meta keywords. Meta tags enclose a brief description of your site, but with a lot of Meta tag abuse, search engines have stopped relying much on it. Meta tag abuse was one of the first forms of SEO spamming and involved stuffing the Meta tags with the targeted search terms.
- Note that most Search Engines are not able to 'understand' Flash and Graphical content, so including your keyword in them will be of little consequence from an SEO point of view.
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