Search Engine Optimization: Tips for a Beginning Webmaster
By Tiffany Hamilton, Associate
Introduction
Search engine optimization refers to a way of building websites that increases their chances of being naturally indexed and ranked highly for keywords within search engines.
Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, are huge databases that contain information from millions, even billions of websites. They use intelligence agents called “spiders” or “crawlers” to search for and index Web pages. These spiders read the information on all pages and follow the links in the pages. Everything the spider finds goes into the index, the second component of search engines. The index contains a copy of every Web page that the spider finds. If the Web pages change, the index is updated with new information (sometimes it can take a while for new pages or pages that change to be added to a search engine’s index).
Search engine spiders look for relevance—which influences not only whether a website is indexed, but also its ranking in search results. A number of factors determine relevance such as the way in which a website is built, the number of keywords in a website (especially in key places like HTML heading tags, alt attribute of the HTML image tag, HTML title tags, and HTML Meta tags), and the number of websites that link to your website. In addition, since search engines typically read the first 200-250 characters of code, it’s critical for keywords to be placed at the top of HTML code. Scripts, complex tables, and other elements can push these keywords down in the code—escaping the reach of search engine technology.
Websites have a bias toward content for 2 reasons:
- Search engines were originally created as academic tools designed to find text information. And still today, search engines index text only.
- Search engines use text to find pages that contain search terms entered by users. This puts pages with little text at a disadvantage.
1. Fill Pages with Content and Keywords
Content is King
Search engines have a bias for text. As a minimum, each Web page should have between 100-250 words. For the sake of Web-friendly reading, avoid crowing Web pages with too much text and ensure that they’re written in a Web friendly manner. But ensure that you have at least between 100-250 words on a page, so that search engines can read it. Search engines will have trouble determining the content for a Web page with little copy and will likely not rank such Web pages highly.
Optimize for 1-2 two phrases per page:
This is a realistic goal. It’s good to have a primary and secondary keyword in mind—but be sure to use other keywords in your pages as well.
Make sure that keywords are prominent in Web pages:
A word near the top of HTML code is more prominent than a word farther down. That’s why the TITLE tag and DESCRIPTION/KEYWORD Meta tag are essential places for keywords. You should also make keywords more prominent in the body text.
Watch keyword density:
Keyword density is the ratio of the search phrase to the total number of words on a page. Pages with higher keyword density will rank better for keywords in search engines. But the keyword density shouldn’t be too high (such as making up 50% or more of all words on a page), search engines may interpret this as spamming and ignore the keywords.
Make Sure Your Pages Include Links with Keywords
In addition to your navigation system, and more importantly placing plain HTML links at the top and bottom of Web pages, ensure that you have links into and out of your Web pages. Also, be sure that keywords are placed in all links.
Links to Web pages:
- Help search bots find pages on your website.
- Links, especially ones with keywords, tell search engines about the page.
2. Remove Clutter from Your Code
Tables
Tables can pose indexing issues with some search engines. By using tables at the top of the page, you’re forcing information that you want search engines to see further down the page. Place important information pertaining to the page content above the table if possible.
Use .js and .css Files to Remove Clutter from Code
It’s important to remove clutter from your code, so search engines can read your Web pages more easily and index key information. For example, if your body text contains keywords in headings, paragraphs, links etc. they will be placed more prominently in code if JavaScript and CSS are placed in external files. It’s also more efficient to use .js and .css files than including the code in each Web page. In this way, you only have to make changes to a couple of files to make universal changes to all pages.
Simple tips:
- Place JavaScript code in a separate .js file.
- Place CSS code in a separate .css file.
Move Image Maps to the Bottom of the Page
Image Maps also clutter Web pages. To ensure that search engines can read the rest of the page content, insert an image map as the last element on the page—right before the </BODY> tag.
3. Avoid the Following Search Engine Optimization Sins
- Frames – never build any Web pages with frames. Search engines have a difficult getting through the frameset page to the actual pages.
- Avoid pasting text directly from Word into an HTML file. It can clutter code. Either save the file as an HTML or plain text file before pasting it from Word into a Web page.
- Avoid Flash Animations - Search engines can’t read them—they contain no useful text for indexing.
- Never embed text in images (to use for headings on a page etc.) Search engines can read text embedded in HTML code, not images. In addition, images are much slower to download onto Web pages.
4. Create Appropriate Filenames & Directory Structures
Filenames – Avoid underscores in file names—search engines may ignore them. Separate keywords in a name with dashes or periods—not underscores.
Directory structure – Keep web pages as close to the root domain as possible. An easy way to do this is to create a directory for each navigation tab (Ex. About us/contact us etc.).
Most search engines have trouble finding pages that are two directory levels or deeper within your website.
5. Use Keywords in Key Places…
TITLE tag
Since the TITLE tag is placed so prominently within HTML code (between the HEAD tags), it’s essential to place the keywords phrases that you wish to optimize a Web page for between TITLE tags. The TITLE tag is one of the most single important elements in SEO Don’t waste space by putting generic phrases in this space, such as welcome, or worst of all, placing nothing at all in the TITLE tag. Here are some guidelines:
- Place 40-60 characters between the TITLE tags
- Place the keywords you wish to emphasize first within the TITLE tag.
DESCRIPTION META tag
The DESCRIPTION META tag describes the Web page to search engines.
Search engines often use this tag in their search results—they’ll use the title tag as the link for the search result, and they’ll use the META tag description as the text that displays under the link. This tag is critical since Google and other search engines index the description. Guidelines:
- Place below the title tag.
- Place a 250 character keyword description in the tag—but avoid overloading the description with the same keyword or phrase—as search engines will interpret this as spamming.
KEYWORD META tag
Many search engines, including the most important Google, don’t use this tag. But since some do, it’s still worth incorporating into your code. Guidelines:
- Limit the tag to 10-12 words.
- Separate each keyword with a comma and a space.
- Place the most important keywords first within the list.
- Make sure that most of the keywords in the tag are also in the body copy.
- Avoid repeating the same keywords within the tag—search engines may interpret this as spamming.
- Use lowercase—since some search engines are case sensitive.
- Avoid using the same keyword tags on all pages. Keywords for each page should differ according to the body copy on each page.
ALT attribute of the IMG Tag
This is another useful place for keywords. But avoid jamming alt tags with lots of keywords, as search engines may interpret this as spamming. The ALT attribute is read by search engines because it gives them clues about a page’s content. Inserting keywords in the ALT attribute can improve your search engine rankings.
Heading Tags & Bulleted Lists – Keywords should be placed in <h1> heading tags and bulleted lists. Search engines consider words in heading tags and bulleted lists important.
Format HTML headers with CSS
To control the way heading tags appear, define a CSS style for heading tags and use heading tags throughout copy. They’re important and strategic placeholders for keywords.
In your style sheet, you can define your style as in this example:
H1 {
Font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
Font-size: 20px;
Font-weight: bold;
Color: #3D3D3D
}
Make Body Text Keywords Stand Out with Formatting
Search engines see words with the formatting below as important.
Some tips:
- Make keyword text bold.
- Make keyword text italic.
- Use the title case for the phrase (first letter in each word is upper case).
- Put keywords in bullet lists.
- Make keyword text larger than the rest of the text (for example, in headings).
Linking Popularity
Whenever possible, try to get other websites to link to the NCNW website. A major factor that contributes being indexed and ranked highly within search engines is linking popularity: the number of websites that link from other websites to an exiting websites. Search engines use linking popularity as a criterion for their indexing and ranking for the following reasons:
- Links make it easier for search engines to find a page: More links to a page increase the likelihood of a page being indexed by search engines.
- Search engines judge a page’s value by the number of links to page: Search engines see pages with many links pointing to them as more important than pages with few links pointing to them.
- Links provide information about Web pages: Links contain keywords that give search engines indexing clues. Also, the theme of websites that are linked to other websites give search engines clues about those websites.
Alternative Ways to Get Into Search Engines & Directories
In addition to traditional crawler-based search engines, there are search directories and pay-per-click (PPC) systems:
Directory: such as dir.yahoo.com and the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) contain categorized information from Web pages. Unlike search engines, the content in directories is created and maintained by people—not technology.” Yahoo charges for directory submissions, but submitting to the Open Directory Project is free.
Pay-per-Click (PPC) systems entail placing small ads into search engines that are displayed when users perform searches. Major search engines with significant traffic offer pay-per-click (PPC) programs. Here’s how they generally work:
- Register with a PPC system by using your credit card to open an account.
- Create one or more ads—providing a title, body text, and link to the page you want to direct visitors to.
- Associate keywords with each ad.
- Bid on each keyword – For example, if you bid to pay higher than anyone else for a keyword, your ad will be listed at the top. You will pay whatever you bid each time someone clicks on your ad.
Paid inclusion programs: Paid inclusion programs get you in search engines within a specific timeframe but don’t affect your ranking within them. You’re simply paying to guarantee your inclusion in a database—your website may still fall on the fourth page of results. There’s usually a flat fee charged per URL for paid inclusion programs.
