My objective is to try and achieve good search engine ranking on
every website I work on. That is not always possible. Just like in a
horse race the objective is to come in first. Sometimes even when you
try and do your best, your horse comes in last. But by consistantly
following what we know to be right, we can increase the chances of
coming up in the ranking, to be on the first page, and most of the time
in the top three.
Keywords in Domain name
There are some folks that believe keywords in your domain have a great
value. While it may be less today then years ago, keyword domain names
to tend to perform better in search engine rankings than those that do
not have keywords in their domain.
The importance is that it is relevant to your business and does not
include anymore than one hyphen. Multiple hyphens are common in spam
sites and will hinder your rankings.
Keywords in page specific URL
Responsibly using keywords in a page’s URL can increase ranking as long
as it is part of a file name that is relevant. For example, if your
site pertains to Kentucky Lake resorts: mysite.com/Kentucky
lake/accommodations/resorts/my resort.html
Heading Tags
Target phrases when placed in heading tags will establish the
importance of those phrases. Heading tags are used to identify words
that are the most important on the page text. While not as important as
they used to be they are still helpful to good website.
Link Anchor text
Link anchor text is contained within your text and allows the user to
click on it to go to a linked page. Link anchor text will boost your
rankings in Google as long as the links are relevant and somewhat
specific. “Click here” will not give you a higher ranking nor is it
likely to appear in search results.
Image Alt Text
The biggest role of image alt text is if you use image-based
navigation. Just as link anchor text will direct you to another page,
the same is true of image alt text. It should also be short and
relevant. A friend asked me, "Just what the heck is Alt Text?" Well,
the spiders don't "see" an image or graphic, so alt just says what it
is in words. Like: Photograph of a 1957 Belair Chevrolet. If it's a
picture of the Chevy we can see it, but it's invisable to the spiders.
Inline Links
Inline links are found within the text, not as menu items. It is
incorporating links into text passages, which provide additional
information or take you to another page. Again, relevance is important
when using inline links.
Site Navigation
In order for Google to crawl a website your site must be spiderable by
the search engines. There are a number of ways that your site may fail
in this aspect.
Flash is a common mistake is used as the only means of navigation on your site. It will hinder your rankings considerably. Java Script/DHTML
cannot always be spidered by Google, which in turn will make you
invisible. Image based navigation needs to be relevant and brief. The
alt text is similar to anchor text and links without the alt text will
not appear.
URL Structure
While longer and more complicated URL’s can be indexed by Google it
is still best to be short, relevant and clean which will in turn make
it more search engine friendly. Adding extra characters, words,
letters, and symbols, if not relevant, also just looks bad.
While just a beginning, the above actions will help you achieve higher
rankings in Google, Yahoo and the other major search engines. The next
post in this series will delve more deeply in optimizing for Google.
My Partner Ray Seggern wrote this piece below on the American Small Business site. I am participating in the event and helping produce it and promote it. I you have ever thought about what you could do to make your business grow...well this is it!
