SEO specifications for websites
SEO specifications for websites
Tools you will need
· Ftp program e: cute ftp
· HTML editor e.g.: Dreamweaver
Choosing your domain:
Ok so let’s start off with your domain name. Having a domain name with your keywords in it that relate to your business can help you have an advantage over competitors and get better rankings, also the age of a domain from my point of view is important. If you have the money to spare, try finding a domain that has your keywords in it and has been around for a few years. It’s also important that you register your domain for up to eight – ten years , this helps with a the “trust factor issue” that Google has .
Search Engine Friendly Pages
It is important that when you design your website that you keep in mind what your websites requirements are, and also what the requirements are for search engines .The best way to approach this is to remember that search engines don’t care about how nice your graphics or flash movies are. Instead search engines look at the code behind your page and take into account the content that you have provided. So keeping your code clean is a good place to start and Do add lots of good reading content .
Page Title
To me and most Seo’s the title tag is the single most important Tag of all. You will need a good title that contains at least two of your major keywords about your site as this will be your hook line in the listings on the search engines. Try not stuff your title with keywords as this will get you nowhere, instead try write your title with a good hook line that will appeal to searchers.
Page Description
A good page description is very important as this will be displayed in the search engine results. This will tell the web surfers what your site is about. I use the fist 36 characters of my welcome blurb on my sites in the description tags. (Put keywords in your blurb)
Keywords
Using the keywords tag, now this tag is debatable among the Seo world but I still us it. When using this tag please use your main keywords but do not repeat them over and over as this will just be seen as spam. If you can add in long tail searches (shop online with local stores) this will help. Also try not to stuff this tag either use about 8 or 9 words in there.
Graphics
I have been asked this about one hundred times, why can’t I use loads of images? Well because it will overpower content remember (content is king) the more Graphics you have the longer it takes a page to load and search engines will have trouble accessing your site. Try keeping it to 70% content and 30% Graphic.
8. Navigation Links
Easy Navigation is so important to spiders; they can’t read flash buttons or other types of graphic links. When linking do not use pop ups this will just make it more difficult to index your other pages. Make sure all your website links are working and easy to follow.
Site Map
You will need one of these because it helps spiders to find pages that are not indexed. With site maps you can list all the pages you want to be found by spiders. You will have to submit your sitemap to Google trough Google webmaster tools in order for spiders to index all those pages you have.
Meta tag placement
To place Meta tags in your webpage you will need an html editor eg: Dreamweaver or if you know how to hand code use notepad.
When you first view your code it will look like this.
1<! DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” 2″http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
3<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
4<head>
5<Meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; Charest=iso-8859-1″ />
6<Title>Untitled Document</title>
7</head>
9<Body>
10</body>
11</html>
You need to place your Meta tags between the <head> my tags go here! </head>
Your code should then look like this:
<! DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″ />
<title>Online shopping –find local shops online</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”this is my new website that sells dolls come in and see it “>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”new,website,home,shops,toys, “></head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Note: the red text is the new Meta code and does not reflect the function colour in html editors.
Once you have done all of the above save your file upload it to your folder with your ftp program. Now all you have to do is submit your site to the search engines. Then repeat the process for all your pages.
Please find the a little added bonus below, all you have to do is fill in the Blanks
<title>your title here </title>
<meta name=”description” content=”your description here “>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”your keywords here separated with commas“>
<meta name=”language” content=”English“>
<meta name=”author” content=”your website eg www.blabla.com “>
<meta name=”Distribution” content=”Global“>
<meta name=”revisit” content=”30 days“>
Please understand that the above information is just the tip of the iceberg, there are over 110 things that you need to do to in order to make your site rank well.
Cheers !
Neil
SEO, Internet marketing Consultant
Duplicate Meta tag issues
I have a problem all my pages are indexed but only my index page’s ranks on Google?
This was a question I was asked by a forum user, so I looked at his site to find that he had a duplicate Meta content issue. This happens usually when you place your Meta info in your header file, it then use’s the same info for all your pages, this is something you need to avoid like the plague. All your pages in your site should have unique tags with specific information related to that page. If you apply this to your site you should see results after the next crawl, also make sure that all your pages are linked properly so the spiders can go from one to another.
Take care
Neil
I work as a full time SEO consultant with one of the biggest Digital marketing companies in Ireland. this is my personal site were i consult on SEO and share my random thoughts and tips.
