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1. Domain Name
Many companies start off by choosing to buy a domain name very close to the name of their business. For example e.g. if you setup a UK company called ‘Smith & Co’ providing supplies for printers you would probably go ahead and buy the domain name www.smithandco.co.uk for your business.
You might think to yourself that there is nothing wrong by registering your company name as your domain name. However,
It is much better for the search engines if you buy a domain name for your website that includes your company name and a key phrase that is relevant to your products or services.
A more suitable domain name (providing it is available) to buy would be www.smith-printer-supplies.co.uk. As you can see from looking at the domain name it tells you straight away the name of your business ‘Smith’ and the type of products you sell online ‘printer supplies’. This domain name will help your website achieve higher search engine rankings if someone searches for the phrase ‘printer supplies'.
With any domain name age plays a very important factor in search engine rankings. The age of a domain gives the appearance of longevity and therefore will give you a higher relevancy score in Google. Please do not think you will achieve top positions straight away as you will need to allow your domain name to grow with age. With a successful SEO marketing campaign in place, you will be on the right track to achieving higher search engine rankings by choosing the correct domain name for your website.
2. 302 re-direct
When you sign up to use an internet service provider (ISP) - they will offer you free web space for you to create your own personalised page or website. The problem with this -your domain name and web hosting are stored in two different locations.
There is an easy solution to fix this problem by setting up frame forwarding on your domain name. If a visitor types your web address into their browser they will now be re-directed to the free web space to view your website. I hear you say ‘perfect’, however the search engines will see this as a 302 temporarily re-direct and this will cause problems for the search engine spiders visiting your site because of the frames.
I would advise buying your domain name and web hosting from the same company to sort out this problem. I understand in some circumstances this will not be possible and you will have your domain name bought from one company and your web hosting by another. I would advise updating the DNS settings on your domain name registrar account with the name server settings provided by your hosting company.
3. Frames
HTML frames are occasionally used by the web designer to organise the design of a website by loading the pages into a frameset. Search engines or software on the web have trouble in reading frames. The main problem is that many search engine spiders do not follow the frames sources from the frameset page. Those that do follow will end up at a page that is not located within the frameset.
If your site uses frames to display your pages - I would recommend using the tag to display meaningful content with a list of links. This will help the search engine spiders to visit the rest of your pages more easily. Also remember to give each of your pages a page title to reflect the content being displayed on the page.
As for accessibility, frames present a real challenge to users with disabilities and particular those who use screen readers to read your content online. I would strongly advise building a website using frames.
4. Splash Page
A splash page is often used as an introduction to show visitors a graphic or fancy flash animation before they enter the main part of your website. One major problem you face when trying to get your website listed within the major search engines using a splash page is that your page contains none or very little text (containing relevant key phrases) or the search engines spiders do not understand or can read Flash to follow the links to navigate around the site.
The Search engines will treat the splash page as your main homepage and as a result will reduce the chances of your site achieving good search engine rankings. My personal advice would be to replace the splash page with your main page. This will allow you to optimise your homepage (main page) increasing the chances of your website being found for more key phrases relevant to your products or services.
If you decide to keep your existing splash page for your website. I would recommend adding a paragraph of text underneath the graphic or flash animation on the page. The paragraph of text must contain a good keyword weight and prominence with a clear visible link for visitors to click on to enter your main page.
5. Homepage – Content
The homepage is the most important page of your website as this is generally the first page a visitor sees when clicking on your URL address. You need your visitors to be able to engage with the content being displayed on your pages. Why not tell your visitors about your Unique Selling Points (USPs)listed below.
- Who you are
- What products or services you provide
- Why should they buy from you
- What sets you apart from your competitors
We recommend you place between 200-300 words of text on your homepage containing a good keyword weight and prominence of key phrases at the top, middle and bottom of the page. I would also recommend adding an alt tag to each image being displayed on the page.
I would recommend taking a look at the keywords tool provided by Google to give you an idea on the most commonly searched keyword phrases visitors would search on to come across your products or services online.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
6. Meta Tags
The meta tags are displayed within the section on your page and are intended for use solely by the search engines. The page title is visible at the top of your browser above the title bar displaying your URL address. The description and keywords tag can be seen by viewing the source code at the top of the page. It is very important to have unique titles, descriptions and keyword tags on each of your pages to reflect the content being displayed on the page.
The keywords tag is now redundant and is not used by the search engines. However I still like to use this tag to fill in the keywords I have optimised the page for as a reference guide. Each unique page title and description tag must contain relevant key phrases relating to the content being displayed on the page.
7. Heading Tags
I consider this to be one of the most important tags after the page title and description tags on the page. It is amazing how many websites do not display a heading tag to reflect the content being displayed on the page. For example a heading tag for the company ‘Smith and Co’ previously mentioned would look something like this.
Great discount on all leading printer supplies
As you see the main key phrase ‘printer supplies’ is contained within the heading tag giving this phrase more weight on the page. There are a list of other heading tags to you can use on the page with the first one being the most important and the last one being the least important.
When you first add a heading tag to the page you will notice the font is rather large on the page and it does not look particularly nice. Please do not panic as this font can be styled using a CSS stylesheet to blend in with the rest of page design.
8. Sitemaps
To make it easier for the search engines spiders and visitors to navigate on the site more easily. It is recommended to add a sitemap to your page containing a list of page links. It is recommended to add a link to your sitemap from your homepage either at the top or bottom of the page.
There are still a number of website owners who do not have a XML sitemap uploaded to help the search engines crawl more easily. Please visit the following link http://www.xml-sitemaps.com to generate a sitemap and upload the file to the root of your directory.
9. Robots file
It is common practice for web owners to upload a robots.txt file to the root directory on the server. This will give you complete control over which directories you would like or not like the search engine spider to visit.
A good example of the robots txt file would be to restrict the spider from visiting a web directory on your server containing private information. You would not want the search engine spider to visit this directory would you?
10. Content Management Systems (CMS)
A content management system is an interface that allows you to update the content on your pages more easily without relying on your webmaster or web company to do it for you. This can save you time and money as some companies may charge you for any additional site changes you would like them to make for you.
One common mistake I come across using content management systems is the restriction not being able to have individual meta tags across the whole of your site. If this is the case it will restrict the rest of your pages to gain better SERP’s (search engine rankings pages).
I would advise asking the company who provides the CMS system - if it is possible to have unique page title, meta description and keyword tags across the whole of the site. A good example is to take a look at the superb SEO friendly CMS provided by EKM Power Shop. http://www.ekmpowershop.com
Article Source: http://www.compass-search-engine-optimisation.co.uk/blog/compass-blog.xml
