1. Page Titles Define Your Website
Everything you need your potential customer to know about your
business needs to be identified in the title and every page title on
your website should be meaningful. You'll easily spot a poorly-optimized
site where the front page title says "Welcome" or "Home" or simply has
no title at all.
Your title should define your website's content and describe your
business because this is what will be displayed in Google's search
results. Keep it short (50 chars. including spaces) and give careful
consideration to the keywords that define your business, describe what
it does and where it does it.
2. One URL to Rule Them All
If your website can be accessed through multiple URLs you'll likely
be penalized by Google seo for "doubling up" on content. Choose your main
URL and have all others redirect to that address (your web host should
be able to help you with this.) This way search engines won't be trying
to figure out which is the preferred URL to present when displaying your
site in search results.
This also applies to your website address with the www prefix,
which should also be set up as a redirect (or vice versa depending on
your preference.)
3. Content is King
Google analyzes the text content of your site to determine how relevant your keywords are. There are many tricks they use including giving more relevance to text in the first half of the page, text inside heading tags and text linked to other pages within the site. Take time to determine the keywords and phrases most important to your website and make good use of them within your meta tags, headings and image tags.4. Get to the Point!
The front page of your website is the most important page. It carries
everything a search engine needs to determine your site's relevant
keywords. If your front page simply says "Welcome to our Website. Click
to Enter" you've not only wasted the user's time with a pointless page
to click through, but you're creating extra work for Google to then make
their way to your real front page and figure out what destination URL
is relevant to users.
5. Don't Be Evil
Google's search algorithms are fairly well-guarded secrets and all
the literature available about boosting search rankings are largely
speculative. What we do know is that Google's famous motto "Don't Be
Evil" is also applied to webmasters and trying to trick Google will
result in severe penalties. While this guide is largely a list of Dos,
it's also worth mentioning some Don'ts:
- Don't load up pages with keyword lists that are the same colour as your background
- Don't deliver different content to Googlebot than you do to regular users
- Don't load irrelevant keywords in your meta tags
- Don't load up multiple title tags (called title stacking)
- Don't keyword-spam your file names
- Don't list your website URL on link farms
- Don't pay to get your site listed on high-PageRank sites
Doing any of the above could get your site banned from Google.
6. Linked Text Counts
When you link to pages within your website the text you link is
counted as keywords used to describe that page. Instead of simply using
"click here" to links, try adding a more descriptive phrase.
7. Control How Google Describes Your Site
Meta tags are HTML tags in your web pages that are hidden from the
viewer but used by Google to fetch a useful description to display for
your site in their search results. Without a meta description Google
won't be giving your website the best representation as it tries to put
together its own description from content on the site.
It's recommended to give each page on your website its own meta
description instead of using the same across all pages, as this will
give a relevant description for deeper search results.
Note: Depending on the user's search query, for relevance
Google may display snippets of content from your page instead of the
page's meta description.
8. Flash is Not So Flash
Flash has its uses, but it is also prone to misuse. Many creative
types build their entire website in Flash, with no regard for the fact
that Google can't extract any text content from Flash. When you present
text content in Flash you are reducing a search engine's ability to
index keywords for your site, so make sure to only use Flash where
absolutely necessary.
9. A Picture Shouldn't Say a Thousand Words
As with Flash, Google can't extract text content from images. Believe
it or not there are still some websites around that use images for
their entire text content! Images should never be used in place of text,
especially with the flexibility of Style Sheets to present headings in
any format required.
When using images for logos, graphs, photos etc. always include a
descriptive Alt tag because Google indexes these words, not to mention
people who are unable to display (or see) images will appreciate your
accommodating them.
10. Quality Links Count
Google's original algorithm for determining a site's relevance was
(and still is) to analyze the volume of incoming links to a site. A site
with a lot of incoming links is considered an authority of sorts. If a
"high authority" website then links to a "low authority" website then
that website's credibility gets a massive lift and increases its rank.
What spawned from this concept was masses of link farm websites
that Google eventually found a way to discredit, and in fact, penalise
the websites listed on them. There is great value in getting links to
your website through link exchanges, but they must be quality links.
Using this model it's easy to see how providing expertise content (just
like this guide) on your website will attract incoming links and boost
your rank.
Note: If you allow users to post comments on your website
always ensure that any links posted include rel="nofollow" in the tag so
Google doesn't count links as recommended by you.
11. A Clear Site is an Organised Site
It's not just users who appreciate clear site navigation, with Google
using folder structure to determine what is the most (and least)
important content on your website.
As an example, a link on your site with 5 sub-folders before the file
name will be treated as content with lesser importance than a file with
only one.
Google appreciates short and descriptive folder and file names
(as will your users) and uses them (along with your Domain) to determine
relevant content in search results.
12. If You Can Measure It, You Can Manage It
Google provide two excellent tools to track your web site performance: Google Analytics, which is a web-based website statistics and traffic tool; and Webmaster Tools,
which focuses on your site's performance as it relates to Google, for
example, how your keywords rate in search results, how many clicks your
site's received etc. It will also help you identify any problems
encountered during indexing.