OPTIMISING YOUR OWN WEBSITE

So you've got your well designed web site full of valuable text content ready to submit to the search engines. Before you do, some final optimisation is a good idea. Spending a short time on each page ensuring that appropriate titles and meta-tags have been used will help pay dividends in the long run.

As with any other stage in the promotional process, optimised titles and meta-tags are not a secret way to get top listings. Titles and meta-tags must be an honest representation of the page content and only by understanding this will you boost your rankings. Titles and meta-tags act as a summary of the page for search engines and their users. They must be honestly written and include key search terms actually used in the body of the page.

Creating a Title
The title is used by all search engines for both rank and the listing that they present to searchers.

We recommend that you keep the title of each page to around 10 words or less. Into this fit the company name, and the two best search terms for the page. For help finding out which keywords on your page are the best ones to use, try putting them through www.wordtracker.com.

Start your title with a capital letter, but do not input the entire title in uppercase. Do not use a period or full stop at the end of the title.

Lastly, keep the title understandable. This is the line that must entice users from the search engine to your site, so simply having a list of keywords for a title tends not to help.

e.g. <title>AJC web site optimisation and search engine submission specialists</title>

Adding a Meta-Description
The meta-description is used by many search engines and can be thought of as a more in-depth title.

When composing your meta-description, keep it to 25 words or less and try to stick to just one sentence. Expand on the title you have chosen, adding more keywords and key search terms that have been identified and extracted from teh body of the page.

e.g. <meta name="description" content="Optimising a web site by adding title, meta-description and meta-keywords with AJC web site optimisation and search engine submission specialists.">

Adding Meta-Keywords
The meta-keywords tag which was once used widely is now used only by Inktomi. If you plan to make submission to Inktomi then include the keywords tag.

Your keywords tag should include any key search terms that you have identified from the body of the page. They should be separated by a comma and a space. Keep all keywords used in this tag in lowercase. Most searches are made in lowercase.

e.g. <meta name="keywords" content="web site optimisation, search engine submission, submit to search engines, optimised titles, meta-tags, key search terms, keywords, ranking, description, meta-keywords, meta-description">

                  

OPTIMISING YOUR OWN WEBSITE 2

In optimise your website part one, we looked at the basic inclusion of a title and meta-tags on every page you build. Adding a title and meta-tags should be second nature. Every time you build a page, add appropriate tags. Great.

So what else can you do to a page to optimise it?

You've got your main search terms already picked out, and presumably you've used them lots of times in context within the main page content. Good

Next step is to use those main search terms within some text as close to the top and bottom of the page as possible. I like to add just a line near the top of each page almost mirroring the heading that I'll use within the page. At the bottom of each page I'll often just use the one or two search terms beside the copyright note.

Headings. At the start of the main text content, use an H1 tag to give the page a heading - this is a really important tag. In it's basic state it's also quite ugly, so use your stylesheet to redefine the H1 tag.

If you have further paragraph headings further down the doc, use an H2 tag to define them. Obviously make sure you use those main search terms in both the H1 and H2 tags.

Alt-tags. Give each image an alt-tag to describe it. Better still, if the image at all relates to the search term, include the search term in the alt-tag.

Bold text. The first time you use your search term in each paragraph, highlight it in bold. It gives a little emphasis to it.

Contextual links. If you use a search term within the body of the text that relates to another page, link it to that other page. Scan the text throughout your site and look for opportunities to link to other pages, or even to other websites. Just having the link there at all increases the prominence of that term on that page.

Link titles. Give each link in your navigation a title tag or an id tag to identify it. Use your search term relating to that link in the tag.

That gives you a good pile of ways to increase the incidence and prominence of main search terms on each page. If you've got good content and apply all these suggestions you are well on your way to a highly optimised site.

Don't forget though that content is king. The higher quality your actual information is, the better you will do in search engines. This process of SEO is merely the polish that will make your listings shine brighter. Content is king, content is king, content is king.