Top 10 for web SEO
I was recently asked (by a Client) what were the top 10 things I would do given a website that was not well optimised to 'get it higher on Google'. I responded immediately that it would make an excellent Blog topic, so here goes: Given the web as it is today, here is my list of the top 10 things to do to make a web site more popular in the search engines...
Entries 1-4 (essential)
1) Content - get it right, relevent, well worded, specific to the proposition of the page - and limited to that!
Content, content, content... It's by far and away the most important thing on a web site. It is also the most often overlooked. From any way you look at it, good content = good performance. I like to think of a search engine as a man with a list of words and a pen 'ticking' them. He reads your words, and every word he finds, he puts a tick next to that word. At the end of the exercise, there are certain words that are more popular than others. BUT, if there are too many words, then no words in particular stand out from the crowd. He is also canny, and if he sees the same word over and over again, he loses interest.
When someone searches for something, the man looks over all his word tallies to see which one is most relevant (excluding those that had too much repetition). The one he will pick will have a higher ratio of search words to the background content.
From this imaginary scenario, one can draw several conclusions... but most imporant are, don't repeat yourself, use diverse language, get into your customer's shoes, eliminate words that are to do with generic things like business background. Get onto the stuff that your customers want, and you won't go far wrong. Incidentally, writing copy has become something that I do often for Clients for SEO purposes.
2) Check your title tags, make sure they contain keywords relevant to the page
Pease make sure that the 'title' of the page is set out, and that it is relevant. Avoid titles like 'about us' that make assumptions to do with the page. The title is your true keyword pool, and should contain the words that you want the 'man' above to notice.
3) Check image alt tags
I will be the first to admit to being slack about this. This is one of the reasons I wrote GinCMS, as it automates putting ALT tags into pretty much everything. Having an ALT tag is a good accessibility feature and also helps you to treat an image as copy which is an excellent opportunity.
4) Simplify the code, eliminate anything unnecessary, especially menus! Use CSS wherever possible, i.e. eliminate FLASH and Java menu code.
There's a lot in this statement that won't mean a lot to many out there, but I have grown increasingly to love pure CSS more and more over the recent months. Attempts to make menus that work out of 'higher' languages generally end up in tedious menus that inhibit SEO performance. A simple LI-UL list with good CSS is the most dependable way of getting your pages read. A side effect of this return to basics is that the mobile browser gets the full picture, and does not have to look for secondary links on the pages.
Interjectory note.... 4.5) Do an adwords campaign
This item doesn't really count from the point of view of SEO, but is worth doing at this stage if you are looking for the next stage in site promotion
Entries 5-8 (a bit more optional)
5) Work out a good model for the meta data (description, keywords, google verification code etc)
Considerable debate exists about the calue of meta data. I have no proof that meta data either helps or hinders SEO performance. On the other hand, with a good quality content manager (plug for GinCMS), these fields can be filled automatically which mean that the box is ticked. As it is good practise to, I always implement metadata these days.
6) Do a sitemap and upload it in google webmaster tools
A sitemap is really useful to have on a site for your Users (and search engines), but there are also other forms of sitemap. This site for instance has a sitemap.xml file for google to peruse at leisure. There's a sitemap.txt and an RSS feed for the page content too. Sitemaps can be registered to enhance your chances of getting your whole site spidered.
7) Get inbound links from other sites, do a press release, ask your friends!
Old fashioned hard work pays. Getting links in from sites that are popular and/or to do with your site will be followed by search engines. The only reason that this item is not higher up the list is that it's good to make sure that your site is worth finding first!
8) Use SEO friendly urls that are descriptive
Some content systems or even non-dynamic sites have short non-descriptive URLs. Once again, there is conflicting evidence about this, but the consensus is that long descriptive URLs are 'Search engine friendly'. URLs are hard to change in most systems however, and should not be changed lightly, since this will lead to broken links in the search engines or other sites if messed around with too often.
9 & 10 are real tweaks
9) Custom 404
Sometimes a link will not resolve to the desired target, or even give an error all together. It is sensible in this case to catch this eventuality and turn it into something productive. (This site will resolve unknown db queries as a sitemap)
10) ...And relax
If you've got this far, your site will be doing really well! Calls from people promising to get you to the top of Google can be ignored in the knowledge that you have done all that really counts. Save your money, keep working on your content, and enjoy a competitve site in the organic listings.