Overview
A website has no value if no one can find it. Therefore, a critical component of any online strategy is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is by no means an exact science. There is no single action or technique a website owner can employ to ensure his or her site will rank well. Instead, if one follows a basic set of principles for good web content design, one can greatly increase the chances of achieving favorable rankings.
General Guidelines
Achieving organic rankings in search engines is difficult. There is no person to call if you are having problems nor is there an overnight solution to a poorly ranked page. Search engines purposely do not publish or disclose how they decide their rankings – if they did that, everyone would exploit their weaknesses to rank well.
As a result, over the years search engines have gotten more and more sophisticated. Many factors, some of which are almost completely out of your control, determine the rank of a given page. Add in the fact that it can take 3 to 6 months to get indexed and appear in the listings and you have a recipe for frustration.
Luckily, there are quite a few factors which you DO have control over and they are not very difficult to manage. They fall into 3 broad categories, namely:
- Site structure & architecture
- Site content
- Linking strategy
1. Site structure & architecture
Your site’s structure is largely determined by its designer. In the case of DHTS, we use an open source content management system called "Xoops". With some minor modifications by strategic web services, Xoops is quite search engine friendly. This, in addition to the initial work we do in determining your site’s sections, already defines most of your site’s structure. For the most part, you do not need to worry about this aspect of optimization as it has already been done for you.
2. Site content
Site content is the
most important aspect of search engine optimization. Well designed content will have several key benefits, including:
· Users see and enjoy the content provided and will, with luck, link to your site.
· Spiders see content that changes frequently and increase the frequency that they visit. This keeps the index fresh and increases your rankings because the search engine notices that this is an active site.
· Proper keyword density ensures that each page is on-topic and relevant.
· Content provides a context, increasing the page’s value and the overall perception that your site is an authority on a given subject.To write content that is both search engine friendly and user friendly, follow the simple guidelines below.
Keep pages on topic.
Each page should be on a specific topic not try to "do all things", with the exception of the homepage. Much of this is intuitive – putting the privacy policy on the cardiologist physician listing doesn’t make much sense.
However, the grey area appears when you have, for example, cardiologists and pediatricians listed on the same page. They are all doctors but they have very different specialties.
The solution is very subjective but can be solved by asking a simple question – "If I was searching for information, would this page be the most relevant to my search?" In the example above, assume you were searching for Duke doctors. The page probably wouldn’t appear because this isn’t a comprehensive list – it only lists two specialties. Now assume you were searching for cardiologists. Again, it probably wouldn’t appear because you have BOTH cardiologists AND pediatricians. A page just listing cardiologists would make more sense. In this case, it would be best to break them into two separate pages. Topics may be broad but the content in them should be equally broad so that it increases the likelihood of appearing for a broad search. Often this comes down to knowing your audience and what they are searching for.
The homepage is a unique page and one of the most important on your site. It should summarize exactly what your site is about – at a glance a user should know what your site is and what they will get out of visiting it. It should also include all the major topics of your site and have content which targets the most important aspect of your site, more specifically the better.
Use your keywords on your pages.
If the keywords your audience is searching for never appear on the page, the chance of your site appearing in a search for those words is decreased substantially. Following the "on topic" rule, be sure to include your keywords several times in the text of your page. Excessive use could result in a negative result – a penalty! So, how do you know if you are overusing your keywords?
Again, the answer is simpler than you might think. When reading the text, does the text appear to be filler in between keywords? Does the text read strangely? If so, you have overused your keywords.
On the other hand, don’t pass up opportunities to mention your words. Don’t use acronyms unless they are terms your users are searching for – that’s an example of a missed opportunity.
Place the most important content near the top of the page.
Search engines assume web sites put their most important content near the top of the page. As a result, information at the top is more heavily weighted than the information at the bottom.
Place your keywords in heading tags.
Important content in web pages is frequently enclosed in "heading" tags. When using the HTML editor, choose the heading style. If you are familiar with HTML, you can use the
tags.
When linking to a page, use the actual keywords in the anchor text.
When creating a link, use keywords relevant to the page you are linking to in the actual link text. Avoid using phrases such as "click here" or images as links.
Do not use images in place of content.
Avoid using images where you could use plain text. Search engines can’t read the text in images and therefore the site gets no benefit from having them on the page. Use plain text for anything you would want the search engines to see.
Always supply alt text for images.
Always supply alt text for images on every page. Not only does this conform to accessibility standards but it also helps increase the amount on-topic content on the page.
Update content frequently.
The more frequently content is updated, the more likely a spider will visit again soon. The more frequently spiders visit, the more up to date the content is in the engines and the more quickly you changes will be seen. Finally, sites that are updated more frequently are viewed by search engines as "active" and therefore more important than sites that are inactive.
3. Linking strategy
The final major component to achieving a well ranked site is to have a good linking strategy. Getting people to link to your site is important because each inbound link can be thought of a "vote" for how important your site is. Google (and other engines) tally the votes and that is a factor in determining if you will rank well for a given keyword or phrase.
Always get a link!
Whenever possible, always get a link to your site. Ask larger websites to provide a link to your site – the closer to the homepage, the better. If you are published in an online article or issue a press release, always include the website url.
Always ask for keywords in the link!
If you do get that link, always ask that the individual link to your site using one or more of your site’s keywords. Avoid using the domain name or "click here" – those words don’t give the search engine a context for what your link is about. So, for example, if your site was about cardiology, you might want to have a 3
rd party link to you using "Duke Cardiology".
Never put frivolous links on your site.
Each time you link to another website, think of that as a "vote" for them. This essentially takes a little bit of your popularity and gives it to them, thus decreasing your chances of ranking well. For a few links this isn’t a major issue, however, if you had a page of 100 links, most of which were not useful you might be seriously hurting that page’s chances of ranking well. This is also not usually a good thing to do from a usability standpoint either.
Never link to bad sites.
If you link to a site that has a poor reputation that site might actually hurt your chances of ranking well. This is because the search engines view your site as endorsing the "spammy" site. If that site is "breaking the rules" your site might suffer as a consequence.
This begs the question – what is a "spammy" site? Unfortunately, this is one of those things that "you know it when you see it." They typically have many links, not very much content, and have poor layout and design.
Technical Terms
It is important to define certain terms which are commonly used before proceeding. These terms are used throughout this document and throughout any literature discussing SEO.
Algorithm – the set of rules a search engine uses to decide the rankings of the sites in its index.
Anchor Text – the actual text on the page a user sees which composes a link.
Backlinks – the links pointing to a given page. Also called inbound links.
Clickthrough Rate (CTR) – the percentage of the number of times a given link has been clicked over the number of unique "viewers" of the link.
Conversion Rate – the percentage of individuals taking the desired action over the number of unique "viewers" of the site.
Cost Per Click (CPC) – in paid placement advertising, the amount you are willing to pay per person clicking your link.
Directory – a listing of web sites, often broken into categories and human edited and reviewed.
Doorway Page / Gateway Page – a single page created exclusively to rank well for a keyword or set of keywords.
Index – a collection of information gathered by a search engine. This is usually a set of archived web pages gathered from bots or spiders.
Keywords – the set of words which describe the content of your site.
Keyword Density – the number of times a given word or phrase appears on a page, in relationship to the number of other words on the page.
Landing Page – the page users will land on after clicking a link.
Link Popularity – the perceived popularity of a given page based upon the number of inbound links it has.
Meta Information / Tags – a collection of information used to describe the content on a page. Typically not meant to be seen by users.
Organic Listings – listings in search engine results which have not been paid for and are the result of the search engine ranking the page.
Outbound Links – the number of links coming off of a page.
Paid Inclusion – some search engines require you to pay to be placed in their index. These are described as Paid Inclusion Programs.
Pagerank – specific to Google, this is a number between 1 and 10 representing your site’s relative "importance" to Google (10 is best).
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – a paid placement campaign where you pay for each click you receive.
Rank – how well a given page is listed on the result page for a given keyword or phrase. Lower is better.
Reciprocal Link – a link exchange between two sites.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – the act of marketing a website through a search engine, usually via a PPC campaign.
Spider (also called "Bot" and "Crawler") – a program designed by search engines to automatically visit your site and read content for indexing.
For more information and many more terms, visit:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/glossary
You can use the following tools for search engine optimization
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