In our technically-obsessed world there has arisen one major God of business success and its name is Google. It is crucial to ensure that your website is noticed by Google because it directs around 90% of all the web traffic in the US. And while Google has helped some businesses rise very high indeed, it isn’t always a benevolent deity!
The process of getting your website you to rank at the top of the Google results for a particular search phrase is known as SEO or search engine optimization and is a combination of making specific updates to your website and then getting other websites to link to you.
Today we’ll be looking at the first part of the equation, optimizing your website to give it the best chance of ranking well on Google.
1. Unique Wording On Every Page
Google’s main method of differentiating pages from one another on the Internet is by the wording that is used on them. Include 300-500 words of unique wording on each page and Google will see your site as valuable, informative and unique from any other site on the Internet. If you simply copy wording form another website (even your own) Google will not give your new site any value at all. Google actively checks for content that is duplicated across the internet, and penalizes the sites that it is found on.
2. Update The Title Tags
The title tags are the words that are displayed above the ‘file’ button on your Internet browser and are used as the headings of your SEO rankings. They are the first indication to Google of what a page is about and a critical to your SEO rankings. Use the keywords you want the site to rank for in the title tags and ensure every page is different to avoid the penalty for duplicate content.
3. Update The Meta Descriptions
While they aren’t heavily weighted in Google’s ranking algorithm, they do affect how many people click on your website in the SEO rankings. Use your meta descriptions to really sell the ‘click’ by giving users a reason to click through to your site. Look at what your competitors are saying and try to say something different, that really speaks to your prospects. Ensure that the meta description tags on each page are different to avoid duplicate content.
4. Add Footer Links For Navigation
Search engine spiders have a hard time reading Flash and Javascript content and may not realize that some of your content exists if it can only access it through Flash or Java. They go from page to page via links and plain text links are the easiest for the search engine spiders to follow. The best way to create them is with a footer menu. You would ensure that your every page on your site links to all other major pages on your site, through the footer area. And to really help your rankings include the keywords you want to rank for in those links.
5. Watch For Duplicate Content
You already know that your title tags and meta tags must be different, and your main copy different to that on other websites, but you can still get snagged by the duplicate content demon. If you have long copyright text or privacy policies repeated on different pages throughout the site, Google might see your web pages as duplicate content and drop it off their main index. If you definitely need duplicated information on a range of pages, put it in an image so the spiders can’t read it.
By implementing each of these SEO optimizations on your new website design you will ensure that it has the best chance for ranking highly in Google. A little planning and go a long way…
About The Author
Alex Cleanthous is the Head Online Strategist of Web Profits, an Australian-based online marketing firm servicing Australasia, the US and Europe. He keeps Web Profits on the cutting edge in all aspects of online marketing. Alex writes an industry blog about SEO, web design and online marketing. Follow Alex on Twitter: @AlexCleanthous.
[...] you have been reading a lot about SEO recently you may be starting to get a little jaded or just suffering from information [...]
I’ve noticed that page titles are very important, but what about the H1 and H.. tags? How much does it hurt your page if you do not properly use them?
Thanks,
Jonas
Hi!
Thank for useful post. I also would like to know as Jonas about H tags.
It will be great if you could explain about it.
great post, raises interesting points
great post about seo!! I like the way you explain in the photo, very clear! thx a lot
Useful and basic tips for beginner and who want optimize his site.
Would like to add more like Keyword Analysis is also main concern of your SEO.
Nice Article.
Thank you for sharing this useful tips on how to optimize a website for SEO. Keywords in the Title tags is the most important factor for seo
These are some pretty solid suggestions. What about the use of meta keywords? I feel that I constantly see the ‘do not repeat content’ theme as an important one.
Yes, and most importantly, make sure your website is dynamic, keep it changing!
Using H1,H2, H3 tags properly also seems to make a difference. content should reflect what is on the title and, meta tags and keywords. Not sure either about improper use of H1 etc. But should only use it once per page.
Why bother having a comment form if you are not going to reply to any of the questions?
Good article however footer links are no more important to SEO than any other link. They are targeted as links just as any other menu on a page is.
One important aspect is to validate the website through W3C validator so that the bot can scroll the entire page and put values to your texts and keywords.
Hey thanks for sharing this advice on SEO, until now I never really understood how valuable it is to create unique copy/keywords etc to boost the websites ratings. It’s now obvious to me that in order to not be penalized by google I have to really spend time and attention on creating content that is cleverly structured and not a duplicate of other sites. I’ll be a lot more aware of how I word my content now. Thanks again!
Warren Jerzyszek
Hey, great blog post. Do you only write on here or do you write on other blogs to? Would like to follow your content.
Very well said ,thanks for the tutorial I’ve learned a lot from it .Keep on posting !
Thanks for sharing, Just what i need.
All the web designers should keep these facts in mind if they really want to see their websites in top ranks in Google list.
Very good article. The duplicate content is very important! Thanks for the tips.
Excellent post… I like your 4th point “Add Footer Links For Navigation” and 5th Point “Watch For Duplicate Content”.
Thanks,
Very good article. I didn’t know that Google ranked websites higher if they had unique content before!
Good idea about the footer navigation links. I now realise I can use those even with my full Flash site, because I’ve used swfAddress so each page has a unique url even though it’s all in Flash.
Good advice for basic search engine optimisation, Content is King is the rule I live by and using the correct h1 h2 h3 etc and linking the right keywords to the right page is vital to.
Nice Advices for On-page Optimization SEO. Website Content is the King of the website.I think, If your website content is really good then it generate some more page rank….
thanks guys
Great article with useful tips
Great Tips for optimising a website, and very helpful to understand how google works and the reason behind certain SEO techniques.
Very thought provoking, particularly the part about duplicate content.
Picked up a couple of hints there that I realised I was doing wrong. Thanks for pointing them out so I can fix them!
Always make changes in your site text. Always maintain white hat SEO technics also.
Xml Sitemap and alternative text for images is also very important to get keyword enriched site.. But nowadays most of the peoples are stuffing bulk of keywords in content to make their site more visible to search engine, they have to know using keyword once is also good we can optimize, for that matter don’t overwrite keywords and don’t spoil the beauty of the website by stuffing restated words to articulate contents..
Venkatesh – Gulfwebstudio.com
Great article on SEO. Simple and effective but useful information. Agree with Vivek – content changes and updating text is important but something we are finding difficult to convince clients of.
These tips are quite basic but will provide a good start for newcomers to the field.
The main thing you should always remember is to keep your code clean and semantic. Use heading tags where appropriate, write good content and don’t try to second guess the engines with spammy hidden links or content.
Good article. I didn’t know that Google ranked websites higher if they had unique content before!
Nice post! Very simple but does create a big impact.
@Lev: Some years back, search engines focused more on fetching meta values. Nowadays, search engines like Google focus more on the page content itself which I think is more relevant since the real value people are searching for is in the web page itself not in some meta tag values.
Sorry for my English. My tongue is trained with a different language.
Thanks for this article and good luck to all of those attempting to do SEO themselves. It takes patience and lots of reading to know what you are getting into.
Thanks for these SEO tips. I want to know the contribution of dynamically generated links using the database queries. Are these dynamic links also good for SEO or make adverse affect? Thanks in advance for suggestion.
Thank you for the information! The 5th, Watch For Duplicate Content, is one that often slips by.
Thanks for the info and some nice clear guidelines. Agree with the chap about the H1 tags as these are really important too as are internal links.
Looking forward to an article on back linking
Thanks for the article… Some good points, lots of them are common sense but I think I need to double check that my meta tags are different for each page as I didn’t realise the importance of this.
10 November 2010 at 11:11 pm
info, says: