By optimising the pages that your adverts direct searchers to, you will improve the quality score of the keywords and searchers are more likely to consider your site more relevant to their searches. The better your quality score (coupled with very good click through rates) the lower your average cost per click will be and the better your impression page positioning will be.
In a bid to improve the " User Experience", as Google likes to refer to it, we are taking the time to give you an introduction to Search Engine Optimisation. This is by no means a definitive guide, but merely an overview of best practices to follow.
To make this information a little easier to digest, we will be splitting it into three lessons.
Title Tag
The title tag plays one of the most html tags used by GoogleBot (and other search engine spiders), and is generally the heading that Google chooses for each of its organic listings. Place your target phrase near the start of the tag and repeat it in the middle or near the end of the tag. For best results, each page on your site should have unique title tags. A little used tip is to make your title attractive to searchers and to add a call to action. If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page.
Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag is by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. The wording used in the Description Meta tag should be short and punchy with your most important phrase close to the start and never repeated more than three times. Like the Title tag, every page on your site should have its own unique Description Meta tag.
Meta Keyword Tag
Although recent changes to Google's algorithm have taken a lot of focus away from the use of this tag due to misuse by over-zealous optimisers, and because a lot of wysiwyg website creation software applications do not make good use of this tag, it still makes good sense to populate the content of the Keywords Meta tag with the most relevant keywords describing your products or services. Where possible match these keywords with the words in the body of your page.
At the end of the day, if you are ticking all the boxes (or the vast majority of them), Google can only view you in a positive light!
Keyword Density
This practice plays a much larger role now that the Google search algorithm has changed. Write your page copy carefully and use your keywords carefully in order that your page makes sense and is easy to read. If you are an electrical contractor, you should use words such as 'electrician', 'electrical contractor', 'electrical installations', etc. as many times in your page headings and wording as possible without it becoming bloated and nonsensical.
Synonyms/Antonyms and other word variations
Ensure that various synonyms, antonyms and variations of your key words/phrases are also used in the body text on your page(s). Google uses these word variations to calculate the relevance of the content on your page.
There are any number of resources available on the internet that can help you with finding relevant word variations, and very soon our very own Smartwordz software will be available to take the drudgery of this task away.
Keywords in Domain Names
If you are able to, obtain a top level domain (TLD) with your most important keyword in the name. Using the electrician example again, www.sparkyelectrician.com.au will attract a better score than www.sparkycontractors.com.au by virtue of the fact that 'electrician' is used in the TLD
Keywords in page URL's
Using keywords in your page URL's can also aid your scores and ranking, if you use them correctly and with relevancy in mind. Try to use keywords as directory and file names where it makes sense to do so. For Sparky the electrician to make make best structural use of the different services he provides, he should consider breaking his site into a well organised directory, so that when the pages are indexed the URL's would look something like the example below:
sparkyelectriciancom.au/emergency_electrician/electrical_emergency.html.
Heading Tags
Using your keywords/phrases within the heading tags on your pages adds to the importance of those phrases when viewed by the spiders. Structure the content on your page so that the most important keywords are used in the H1 (heading 1) tag, next most important in the H2 tags, and so on. Once again remember the mantra 'Relevancy' and do not clutter your tags with irrelevant keywords, as this will end up counting against you.
Link Anchor text
This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.
Image Alt Text
Image alternative text tags are important, especially in image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.
Image Alt text should always be relevant and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags solely for adding to your keyword density.
Inline Links
These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.
Site Navigation
It is absolutely imperative that your website is able to be indexed by the search engines. You would assume that this statement comes straight out of the book of all things obvious, but you would be surprised how often often web designers ignore Google's ability to crawl a website. Googlebot is very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a site, but there are still some things which will cause it headaches.
- Flash: Use of Flash as a platform for your site should be avoided at all costs. At it's most basic level, your site will be viewed simply as a movie file. If you want your site to be highly visual and graphic orientated, then rather use flash elements embedded on your html site - Do not let your web designer talk you into an expensive flashy Flash site, for, in terms of SEO, it will be money poured down the drain. You have been warned!
- Frames: Avoid using frames for your site wherever possible. The Spiders will not be able to index your site correctly. It may be the case that that your web designer prefers to use frames for the graphical and design time-saving benefits it gives them, but what is the point of having a site that cannot be indexed, and thus not found?
- Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be indexed by the more powerful search engines, but this is not always the case with the smaller ones. If your site uses fancy navigation and you are battling to find the internal pages of your site, have a look at Google's Cached Text version of your pages. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation is probably invisible to the spiders.
- Images: Image based navigation is ok to use, but remember that you absolutely must use relevant alt text tags on your buttons.
Summing it all up
Ensuring that basic SEO guidelines are followed is crucial to your online success. On their own, the points mentioned above will not necessarily fire you to the top of the search engine impression pages, but they will definitely help in getting the spiders to see you. When coupled with an Google Adwords advertising campaign, you will be on target to achieve a better return on investment.
Paul Falla is the Research and Development Manager at Searchsmart Pty Ltd, based in Perth, Western Australia.
