Optimising Your Website To Be Found

Matt Roberts - Linkdex

published 1297255911

Google can’t see your website and can’t see your images. It can only read what you have written about yourself, and what other people have contributed as comments or reviews.

To help ensure your content can be read and understood by Google they have written a great web page great optimization guide on how to tell them what you should be found for – Google’s SEO Guide. The more technical term for this is on-site optimization.

Here’s a summary of the main elements, with additional bonus commentaries and advice.

Meta Data & Search Results

When you search Google and the other search engines, you will notice each result has several parts. In the graphic below you can see; the page title (blue), the page description (black) and the URL or link (green).

You can also see that part of the blue title is in bold. This was the phrase typed into Google.

The information displayed comes directly from your website, but as a user, you can’t see it because it is contained within the source code, in a section called the meta data.

The two elements you need to know about are the page title and the meta page description.

You can view these labels in a website if you ‘right-click’ your mouse on a web page and select “view source” or via the ‘Edit’ on your browsers top navigation bar. Here’s the page title and meta description for the search result above.

<title>Cheap flights to Australia | compare Australia flights here – travelsupermarket.com</title>

 

<meta name=”description” content=”Are you searching for a cheap flight to Australia? Our flight finder compares prices for Australia flights from over 50 airlines and online travel agents”/>

Google Keeps Telling Us That Page Titles Are Important

• Page titles help consumers decide which results to click on

• They should be an accurate description of what a consumer would find when they visit your page

• They are a ranking factor that should contain keywords you want to be found for

It is unusual to find a result on the first page of Google that doesn’t contain the keyword you typed as part of the page title, and it’s an area of site optimization Google themselves stress a lot.

However, don’t confuse the fact that page results normally have the keyword in the page title with that being the only cause. Although we know the page title is important, we should also recognize that there are hundreds of other contributing ranking factors. This goes for all of the ranking factors we will discuss.

The other thing about page titles is the text also becomes your headline / advert. So if your page title is ‘Home’ then ‘Home’ will be your headline in Google, which doesn’t say very much to your customers, and increases the chances they will click elsewhere.

Page Title Actions:

• Find out how to change the page titles on your website – it’s normally easy.

• Ensure your Page Titles are in the right format for searchers and search engines

• 65 character or less, with your keywords ideally at the beginning – Don’t worry, Linkdex will alert you if your Page Titles are too long or short, and if keyword/phrases are not present

• Include your brand name at the end

• Consider adding a few words that make your Page Title have what we call ‘meta appeal’

• Punctuate using a comma (,) a hyphen (-) or a vertical line (|)

Good: Chiropractor New York, NYC | Same Day Treatment – Spinalign

Bad: Spinalign

Tip: Duplicate page titles can result in pages not being indexed and ranked. You can check if you have any duplicate page titles by using Google Webmaster Tools

Page Description

Although your page description is much less important to Google for determining how high you are ranked, it helps searchers by providing more information about you and why they should visit your website. This is an opportunity to grab a customer’s attention in two lines.

If you don’t put your own description, then Google will allocate text from your site to display on the results page. Although this may not be random, it is unlikely to be optimal to conversion, so it’s better to control what appears than have a machine choose for you.

Page Description Actions:

• Check your descriptions by searching for your page in Google or using the view source command from your browser

• You may want to include some of your keywords in the page description, but DON’T just have a list of words separated by commas. The description should read like an advert for your business and the page the user is going see.

Good: Spinalign provides chiropractic treatments at our modern clinic on the Upper East Side of New York. Same Day Appointments. Over 20 years experience.

Bad: Chiropractor, Chiropractic treatment, Clinic, New York, Spine, Back, Neck

 

Have you got Meta Appeal?

When you’ve optimized your titles and descriptions, imagine you are the 3rd search result from the top of the 1st page. Are your page titles and descriptions relevant for the term searched for? Do they describe your page? Do they sell your business better than the results in position one and two?

Domains, Page Folders and Page Names

Search engines read the name of your business, and the URL of each page contained on your site.

If your domain name contains your keyword this is an advantage but not a reason to re-brand your business.

When naming folders and pages, describe each page accurately, including the keywords you want to be found for where possible.

Where more than one word has been used, separate each word with a hyphen ( – ) not an underscore ( _ )

Good: http://www.realestateagent.com/houses-for-sale.php

Bad: http://www.realestateagent.com/page4345.php

Natural Language Addresses: Check your page addresses for readability.

Good: http://www.printer.com/book-printing/perfect-bound-books.php

Bad: http://www.printer.com/a/s?id=1Vd_#hl=en&source=hp&q=Books

Headings and ‘Body’ Content

Headings

Webpages are like pages of newspaper. Different types of content or text have different purposes. Headlines help to separate different themes or stories and those headlines usually contain words that are relevant to the normal text of the paragraph.

While the human eye can see that headline text might be larger or a different color or bold, Google has to rely on the computer code which is called the “source code” of the page to tell it that it is a heading.

Most content management systems automatically manage this code, but it is worth taking a quick look at your site to see that Google is getting the right information. Google will look for the following code:

• <H1>  = Heading Level 1. Most important and normally only one of them per page

• <H2> = Heading Level 2. Less important and can be more than one per page

• <H3> = Heading Level 3. Less important and can be more than one per page

Heading Actions

• Have you used your keywords in your page headings? Linkdex’s Site Optimization tool will check whether your keywords are in at least one of your headings, if they are not you’ll be able to add yourself a task.

Body Content and Paragraphs

The copy in the middle of your webpage is called the body, and the body section contains the paragraphs you have written for your visitors to read.

Although there is no code that allows you to make some content in your paragraphs more important than other paragraphs, it is widely believed that text at the top of the page is considered by search engines to be more important than the text at the bottom of the page. This is because text at the top of the page is more likely to be read than text at the bottom.

The copy in the body of your text should contain keywords and phrases that you want to be found for, but your copy MUST still be engaging, readable, and relevant to human visitors to your site. After all, you want your visitors to read your site and engage with your business.

Actions

• Mention your keywords early on in your body copy and from time to time in the rest of the content.

TIP: You might be tempted to cram your text full of your keywords to the detriment of smooth flowing natural language. Don’t. ‘Keyword stuffing’ or copy written in an unnatural way will not help you as Google can compare writing styles. Write copy for your users first, but try and combine your user centric copy with the rules from above.

Images

Have you ever received an email where the images have been blocked? This is what your website looks like to a search engine. Google can’t interpret images on your website. That includes your logo and any text written on a picture on your website.

However, you can describe what images are by naming the image file and describing the image in what is called the Alt Text. This is an example of what the code that tells Google what an image is about looks like.

Good: <img src=”http://www.mytravelsite.com/beach-bungalow-thailand.jpg”
alt=”luxury beach bungalows in ko-samui”>

Bad: <img src=”http://www.mytravelsite.com/assets/34243.jpg”>

Most content management systems (CMS) allow you to add the Alt Attributes to an image.

Image Actions

• Name image files in a way that is consistent with your keyword strategy for the page. So for all new images added to your website, rename files before they are uploaded. It might not be worth renaming all your old images depending on how many you have on your site.

• Add ALT Text that is consistent with your keywords and relevant to text on the page.

Internal Links, Page Rank & Link Juice

Internal links are links that join pages on your website to other pages on your website. Their primary function is to allow users to navigate to other relevant content. However they do have a secondary function. They also allow search engines to find their way from page to page on your site and learn a bit more about the context of the page they are visiting. They also pass on something called Link Juice – a topic you must read about.

So here’s some practical advice on internal links:

Links can form part of your main navigation or where keywords appear in your content and you’ve got a relevant page about that word, you can use those words to form an internal link to that page.

For example, if you are a real-estate agent that has a specific page on your website dedicated to 2 bedroom apartments for rent. You can create an internal link like this:

At Big Town Real Estate we have some of the most modern and well appointed 2 bedroom apartments to rent in some of the most exclusive neighbourhoods.

The source code for the text above would look like this to Google:

<p>At Big Town Real Estate we have some of the most modern and well appointed <a href=”htp://big-town-real-estate.com/2-bed-apartments-rent.php”> 2 bedroom apartments to rent</a> in some of the most exclusive neighborhoods.</p>

The practice of internal linking is important for two reasons:

Page context: The words that form the link provide contextual clues to Google saying what the target page is about. So if your page on ’2 bedroom apartments for rent’ is linked to when other pages mention ’2 bedroom apartments for rent’, then this page’s relevance for this term is increased.

Good: See our 2 bedroom Apartments for Rent

Bad: To see our 2 bedroom Apartments for Rent, Click Here

Page importance: The more a page is linked to from other pages on your website, the more important that page is to your website. Highly linked to pages are relatively more important to your website than pages that may have very few internal links. This means the pages you want to rank the most should have the most internal links.

Internal Link and Link Juice Actions

What you now need to do is check:

• Have you optimized your links from your homepage to direct Link Juice to your most important pages?

• Do your most important pages have more internal links than the others?

• Are your internal link anchors consistent with the page you are linking to and your keyword strategy?

Sitemaps

Sitemap for visitors

A sitemap is a page for your visitors that can help them find the most relevant pages. It usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the categories and key pages on your site. You often find the link to a sitemap on a websites footer.

Visitors may visit this page if they are having problems finding pages on your site. Search engines will also visit this page, which might help them find pages that are otherwise hard to find.

Sitemap for Google

Creating and submitting an XML sitemap is a way of telling Google about all the pages on your website that perhaps they may not discover during their usual crawls of your site. Here’s what Google has to say on sitemaps.

Some content management systems can create / update XML sitemaps as you go. If yours doesn’t there are tools like XML Sitemaps you can use.

When you’ve got yourself an XML sitemap created and uploaded to your site, you can tell Google about it via Google Webmaster Tools.

Navigation Actions

• Put a visitor sitemap page on your site that visitors can use to find the most important pages.

• Create an XML Sitemap file and use Google Webmaster Tools to tell Google about it.