10 SEO Techniques All Top Web Sites Should Use
Posted November 5, 2008 in Tools/Resources, Web Design 78 Rockin' Comments »
SEO is such a hot topic these days. How do you get your web site within the first page or two of the search engines? How do you increase your Google page rank?
There are companies who dedicate themselves full time to doing SEO at a pretty penny. Something a lot of people can’t necessarily afford to pay for or spend the time on.
However, there are some simple things you can do when building your site that will help increase your chances of having good results. In no particular order, below are 10 of these items…
1. Title Tag
Near the very top of a web site’s source code you’ll find various meta tags — the standard ones being the Title, Description and Keyword tags. The title tag is technically not a meta tag, though it is commonly associated with them. The title tag plays such a large role in the indexing of your web site, that it is considered the most important of the three.
A page title is the first thing a search engine will look at when determining just what the particular page is about. It is also the first thing potential visitors will see when looking at your search engine listing.
It’s important to include a keyword or two in the title tag — but don’t go overboard - you don’t want to do what’s known as “keyword stuffing” which does nothing but make your web site look like spam. Most people will include either the company name, or title of the particular page here, as well.
2. Meta Tags
There are two primary meta tags in terms of SEO — the description and the keyword tag. It’s debatable whether the search engines use the description tag as far as ranking your results. However it is one of the more important tags because it is listed in your search result — it is what users read when your link comes up and what makes them decide whether or not to click on your link.
Be sure to include a few relevant keywords in this tag, but don’t stuff it with keywords either. The description tag should read like a sentence — not a keyword list.
Due to “keyword stuffing” many search engines now completely disregard the keyword tag. It is no longer nearly as important as it was years ago, however it doesn’t hurt to include them in your source code.
When creating your keyword list, you’ll want to think of the specific terms people will type in when searching for a site like yours. Just don’t go overboard — too many duplicates are not a good thing (as in “web designer” “web designers” “custom web designer” “html web designer” “your state here web designer” - you get the idea). Those are all basically the same, so pick one or two variations at the most and move onto the next keyword.
3. Proper Use of Heading Tags
This is a very important element to consider when writing out your site copy. Use of heading tags helps users, web browsers and search engines alike know where the major key points of your copy are.
Your main page title should use the <h1> tag — this shows what your page is about. Use of additional tags, such as <h2> and <h3> are equally important by helping to break down your copy. For one, you’ll see a visual break in the text. But as far as the search engines are concerned, it will automatically know what your topics are on a page. The various heading tags give a priority to the content and help index your site properly.
4. Alt Attributes on Images
Putting alt attributes on your images actually serves two purposes. In terms of SEO, putting a brief yet descriptive alt attribute along with your image, places additional relevant text to your source code that the search engines can see when indexing your site. The more relevant text on your page the better chance you have of achieving higher search engine rankings.
In addition, including image alt attributes help the visually impaired who access web sites using a screen reader. They can’t see the image, but with a descriptive alt attribute, they will be able to know what your image is.
5. Title Attributes on Links
Including title attributes on links is another important step that any good web site will have. That’s the little “tool tip” that pops up when you place your mouse over a link. These are especially important for image links, but equally useful for text links.
As a note, you should use descriptive text for your links. “Click here” doesn’t really tell a person - or more importantly, the search engines — what the link is. At the very least put a title tag that will explain that “Click Here” really means “Web Design Portfolio” for example. Better yet - make the main link text something like “View my web design portfolio” — this will give some value to the link showing that the resulting page is relevant to searches for portfolio’s.
6. XML Sitemap
My last post referenced the sitemaps used by web visitors to help them navigate through your site themselves. However, there’s another version — XML sitemaps — that are used by the search engines in order to index through your site, as well.
This list of ALL pages / posts / etc. of your site also includes information such as the date the page was last modified, as well as a priority number of what you feel the most important pages of your sites are. All elements that help the search engines properly find and link to all content of your site.
7. Relevant Content
Having content relevant to your main page or site topic is perhaps the most important SEO aspect of a page. You can put all the keywords you want in the meta tags and alt image tags, etc — but if the actual readable text on the page is not relevant to the target keywords, it ends up basically being a futile attempt.
While it is important to include as many keywords in your page copy as possible, it is equally as important for it to read well and make sense. I’m sure we’ve all seen keyword stuffed pages written by SEO companies that honestly don’t make much sense from the reader’s point of view.
When creating your site copy, just write naturally, explaining whatever information you’re discussing. The key is to make it relevant, and to have it make sense to the reader. Even if you trick the search engines into thinking your page is great — when a potential customer arrives at the site and can’t make heads or tails of your information and it just feels spammy to them — you can bet they’ll be clicking on the next web site within a matter of seconds.
8. Link Building
We’ve probably all heard of Google Page Rank — it seems to be every web site owner’s dream to have as high a page rank as possible. While the algorithm for determining page rank encompasses many elements, and is constantly changing, one item is the number of links pointing to your web site.
Now, you’ll want to steer clear of link farms and other spammy attempts at getting links to your site. However there are many reputable and niche directory sites that you can use to submit your web site, or specific blog articles to.
With genuine content — especially if you have a blog — you’ll be able to generate links with other web sites and blogs, as well. It’s somewhat of a give and take, in that if you link out to other sites, you’ll find sites linking back to you — and hopefully see your page rank going up, as well!
9. Social Media
Although technically not SEO, Social Media is such a growing factor in getting your web site noticed, that it’s an important element to include in your plan.
Social media ranges from social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon and many more. There is a lot of relationship building involved, but as you build your own networks and build quality content on your web site or blog, you’ll see traffic to your web site increasing, as well.
As with any relationship, it is a give and take. Don’t just expect to join a site like Twitter for the pure sake of pushing your content. That just won’t fly — your true intentions will stick out like a sore thumb and do nothing but turn people off.
Even if you are on the site purely for networking reasons, the key is to make friends. Help out members of your network if they ask for a “retweet” or Digg, give helpful advice if asked, etc. You’ll see the same in return.
If you write a great post and have built meaningful relationships with peers in your niche, you’ll often find that friends will submit your posts and give you votes on the social bookmarking sites. The more votes you receive, the more likely your post is to be noticed by others and shared around, often resulting in additional link backs from other blogs, etc.
10. A Few SEO Don’ts — Flash and Splash
Along with any list of Do’s come the Don’ts. As far as SEO is concerned, two of these items are splash pages (often consisting of a flash animation) and all flash web sites.
Yes, flash is pretty! Full flash web sites can actually be amazing to look at — their own bit of interactive artwork. But unfortunately the search engines don’t get along well with Flash. Although there is talk of possible advancement in this area, for the most part the search engines cannot read Flash.
All that great content that you wrote for your site will not be seen by the search engines if it’s embedded into a Flash web site. As far as the search engines are concerned, your all flash web site might as well be invisible. And if the search engines can’t see your site content, a good chunk of potential customers will miss out on what you have to offer, too.
Equally as “pointless” are splash pages. Once very popular, the splash page should no longer be an important feature of any site. While splash pages used to serve as an introduction into a web site (often with a flash animation), it is no longer seen as helpful, and often times might actually annoy visitors.
For one — it’s an extra click to get into your content. Worse is when you don’t give a “skip intro” option or set of links into your main site content — because you’re essentially forcing your visitors to sit through the full animation. If you’re lucky, this will only annoy them… if not — they’ll just leave without giving your main web site a shot. And without an html link pointing into your site, the search engines have no way to continue either (unless you made use of a sitemap.xml file — but still…)
A good alternative to both issues is to make use of a flash header. There’s no problem to include a flash animation at the top of your main site, or as a feature within the content area, etc. Because this is an addition to your web site, as opposed to a full separate element.
Back Over To You… What Are Your Favorite SEO Tips?
There are so many tips and tricks to good SEO. These are some of the more obvious ones, but I know there are more!
What are your best SEO tips, tricks or tools? Please share in the comments below!
Note: Please only share “White Hat” or “Ethical” SEO techniques! No “Black Hat” or sneaky tactics that can backfire and actually get you banned from the search engines. Thanks!
Image credits: Unhindered by Talent, dariuszman86, dcJohn
About the author: Selene M. Bowlby is a web designer and front-end web developer with over 10 years of professional experience in the design industry. After taking the "freelance plunge" in 2008, she runs her company, iDesign Studios full time, where she specializes in creating custom web sites for other small businesses.
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78 Rockin' Comments
Dave Navarro
November 5th, 2008 at 4:59 pmGlad to see your second post, Selene.
Stumbled!
Toma Bonciu - SEO Services
November 5th, 2008 at 5:04 pmHi,
I would add : relevant text links on your pages, all your web pages should be accessible from at least one text link, images and files should have in their names the keywords targeted
Thank you
Simon
November 5th, 2008 at 5:08 pmGreat minds think alike, I just published a similar post today on my blog:
http://www.soul-star.com/seo-1.....-it-there/
frank
November 5th, 2008 at 5:15 pmThis is great! Thanks!
Paul Davis
November 5th, 2008 at 5:17 pmHehe, how do I tell a client they shouldn’t have their splash page!
Arron Lock
November 5th, 2008 at 5:20 pmgreat post. good info on here.
Mason Hipp
November 5th, 2008 at 5:34 pmAnd Selene posts another home run…
This list is great for general developers to keep in mind. Not all of us will agree on every single point (SEO is a bit fluid, after all) but I think this provides a great starting place for anyone who isn’t already an SEO expert.
Thanks, and it’s great to have you on FF again!
Valeria | TimelessLessons
November 5th, 2008 at 5:50 pmI would add: Create a top hits or featured posts section that makes it easy to find your best content. Also link back to your older posts in some of your newer posts to alert new readers to the best related posts in your archives and help search engines understand which pages are most important.
Jonathan Drain
November 5th, 2008 at 6:01 pmWriting plenty of relevant content is key. Blogs are successful because they represent frequent updates, numerous pages, and relevant title tags and text.
Ryan Kopf
November 5th, 2008 at 6:25 pmI remember reading several of these already, but it’s good to see them compiled all together.
Jacob Cass
November 5th, 2008 at 8:16 pmNice one Selene… there was another article similar to this on my blog written by Joshua Jeffreys.
“10 Seo Rules For Designers”
Cole Henley
November 5th, 2008 at 8:30 pmGood summary.
I know this is going to sound pedantic but images and links feature alt and title attributes not tags - they are values that are added to a tag.
Jumping Dog Design
November 5th, 2008 at 9:07 pmGood, sensible list that every site should adhere.
Brian Hoff
November 5th, 2008 at 9:51 pmGreat article Selene…I learned new things about the Alt tags. Good stuff!
Daniel Richard
November 5th, 2008 at 11:26 pmContent and Relationship Building are still the methods I use to get views on the blog.
Eg: 120+ Participants Of Blogging Idol 2 (2008) - connecting with the participants on the contest that I’m also in helps. :)
Joshua Richards
November 6th, 2008 at 12:39 amActually, google does index flash sites, and copy within a flash site is actually indexed as well, i know because I’ve tried it and it works.
Also use of a system like swf address allows deeplinking with flash, so users can book mark direct pages of the site.
Please see here:
http://googlewebmastercentral......exing.html
Dainis Graveris
November 6th, 2008 at 2:21 amhuh, pretty useful, about flash i didn’t know :)
Daniel Craig Jallits
November 6th, 2008 at 4:19 amActually I have noticed that Google is doing a much better job of indexing textual Flash content which is embedded in the SWF file. Is it absolutely perfect? This I can not answer because 1) I do not work for Google and 2) because even if I did work for Google I wouldn’t have the ultra secret clearance to see what their algorithm is for indexing sites.
Razvan Pavel
November 6th, 2008 at 6:38 amGoogle has figured indexing flash web sites since august. good tips btw
Selene M. Bowlby
November 6th, 2008 at 7:42 amThanks for all the great feedback, everyone. I’m especially glad about the additional tips - there is SO much involved in SEO, so the more tips we can all share, the better!
@Joshua - That is GREAT news about google and flash! I had heard rumors about it a few months ago, but didn’t know how accurate it was. Thank you for posting the link!
Do you know if it is just Google, or if it is some of the other major search engines as well, such as Yahoo and MSN?
@Mason - I’m glad to be back - thanks for having me here again!
Udi Drezner
November 6th, 2008 at 9:18 amNice Post
It is also important to keep the upload time of the site’s page short. Pages with heavy images upload slowly and can get “punished” by search engines.
Melek
November 6th, 2008 at 10:20 amgreat article!
another thing i like to do (and hopefully it helps SEO altho i’ve never run any tests on it) is to name my pages specific to their content. Take this blog post for instance. you named the page (or rather the folder it resides in) “10-top-seo-techniques”. Perfect! that describes the content in the page. So, instead of naming your pages (or directories) something generic like “toptips.html” or even “blog110508.html”, go with something specific that the search engines can recognize.
Craig Farrall
November 6th, 2008 at 10:35 amWow Selene, great post yet again, becoming a regular here now aren’t you, I think they should just hire you now ;)
This is an excellent post, seo is something I am not too good at, being high up on google is never something that has happened to me, but these tips are great, I can try set them into motion now :)
Adobe Girl
November 6th, 2008 at 12:43 pmGreat post-and even better news about the changes at google regarding flash : ) I just tested google to see the search results of some of my sites with flash and I am SO excited!!
Swim University
November 6th, 2008 at 2:05 pmGreat short and to the point list. I won’t stress the social media tip enough. It’s powerful!
nelchee
November 6th, 2008 at 5:15 pmOh for the love of Bob, “alt” and “title” are not tags, they’re attributes!
Otherwise, it’s a nice collection of essential SEO techniques for the newbies.
Wind Twister
November 6th, 2008 at 5:45 pmThank you once again for the great tips. As a new blogger I find this to be so helpful that I subscribed to the RSS feed. Keep up the wonderful work, the posts are always so informative I always learn something.
mdinis
November 6th, 2008 at 7:51 pmGreat one Selene!
You got together valious pieces of information about SEO!
Even if we already know lots about optimization, there is always something we didn’t know about or some details we remembered again!
keep in mind that “alt” is an attribute not a tag!
your first post was very good too! :)
keep up the good work! really inspiaring!
Alberto Villalobos
November 7th, 2008 at 2:32 amThanks for the tips , i have just launched my web design freelance services site. and i have submitted my site to web galleries and it has been acepted, i integrated wordpress to my site too, i think i have started very well.
sorry for my english, i am from mexico
Outsourced Design
November 7th, 2008 at 11:38 amSimple, but true. And yet there are still those that won’t follow this advice.
HowToMakeMyBlog.com
November 7th, 2008 at 12:03 pmSome interesting points! I have recently started a blog where I write about all the aspects of starting a new blog from scratch and getting free and organic traffic to it. It is nice to see that my blog posts have touched some of the same subjects as your article.
Marko
http/www.howtomakemyblog.com
mihai
November 7th, 2008 at 12:11 pmVery good article Selene, here’s the Google answer: http://www.google.com/support/.....swer=35291
My favorite tip is the good and regular content, clean and short url’s & a page that load in ~3sec.
Addicott Web
November 7th, 2008 at 12:14 pmGreat article, thanks for posting! I really liked the concise summary you provided… I’m definitely going to have to refer people to what you wrote, it’s a big issue that I deal with constantly.
Danh ba web 2.0
November 7th, 2008 at 12:40 pmThanks for share. Great post !
GrafixStudio
November 7th, 2008 at 12:49 pmThank you for you help, I added alt tags to my website as soon as I read your article. Here’s a good technique to embed flash and still be able to validate your code.
If you just let Dreamweaver handle your Flash embedding, your code will not validate.
Good luck!
Lee Munroe
November 7th, 2008 at 12:59 pmNice list Selene, it’s amazing how many sites you come across that don’t make good use of the title tag.
1955 Design
November 7th, 2008 at 1:09 pmThese are great tips, but already should be implemented by any competent web designer. Building sites the right way, with SEO friendly techniques, should be the standard rather than the exception.
It’s sad that some clients pay extra for these type of SEO techniques when they should already be part of their initial web design.
Tao - board games Canada
November 7th, 2008 at 1:55 pmOh, I’d also add have unique title tags for your pages. This is especially a problem for e-commerce sites if you are using one of the out-of-the-box systems as the level of customisation for pages is often low.
wordpress
November 7th, 2008 at 2:13 pmthis is really helpful info
Giania
November 7th, 2008 at 2:25 pm:( That relevant content sits in the lowly position of #7 makes me sad. That anyone has to be REMINDED that meaningful, well-written content is important makes me even MORE sad.
Selene M. Bowlby
November 7th, 2008 at 2:34 pmThanks for the great comments and additional suggestions!
I’ve learned my lesson on the alt/title “attribute” not “tag” - don’t think I’ll make that mistake again, LOL.
Also, just a reminder that the items in the post are not in any particular order…
Timothy
November 7th, 2008 at 4:48 pmGood post!
I have had a good amount of knowledge in this, such as with header tags, titles and whatnot, but the alt property information was useful.
Ryan
November 7th, 2008 at 4:58 pmThere is no such thing as an alt tag, if you’re going to offer advice get your facts right first.
Selene M. Bowlby
November 7th, 2008 at 5:26 pmJust a note that I’ve corrected the references in the post to Alt/Title “Attributes” - thanks for pointing out mistake.
James
November 7th, 2008 at 6:53 pmKool info,
Page names are a great want to get long tail traffic. Use the same phrase as the term you want to rank for in the page name.
mayhemstudios
November 7th, 2008 at 11:51 pmGreat solid information! Everyone should read this article. Keep up the good work. Tool! :)
de
November 8th, 2008 at 8:53 amYep totally agree. This is a great place to start. The hard bit is spending the time on each section, and good luck with the link building…
web design company
November 8th, 2008 at 11:58 amNew keyword rich content on website is also crucial. From my own personal experience I have found this to be one of the most improtant factors. Ever siince I startedf adding new pages on website I have seen a steady increase in website traffic. Addina blog in a sub fiolder of the main domain is a good way to add new content regularly.
Stephan Miller
November 9th, 2008 at 3:39 amIt doesn’t take much SEO to help your site out a lot. Great summary of simple ways to make a blog more search engine friendly.
Tim
November 10th, 2008 at 7:25 amSelene - well done. I have read several articles on SEO. Most of them are rehashed garbage by wannabe’s or trickster that just want my money. Your article is well written and meaningful. The only thing I would add is this. Frequent updating. It seems even the most perfectly SEO’d webpages lose their popularity over time. A little adjustment or tweaking now and then will help keep it near the top of the search engines.
pencuri kode
November 10th, 2008 at 9:42 amnice your post.. i am begineer for seo. thanks forever for you.
Search Engine Services
November 11th, 2008 at 12:55 amGreat blog post Selene. I love reading blogs especially if the topic is related in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) / Online Marketing.And helps me to have a new idea and added my knowledge.
thank you for sharing your knowledge. keep it up! =)
Veselin Todorov
November 17th, 2008 at 4:45 pmActually i’m not pretty sure that Meta Tags are still alive for Google. It ignores ‘em. But it’s still ok for the other, not so important factor but well it’s still something… I can say that link building ownes you and your site, but without nice organized content it cant be something that will get you in top 10. The domain name is also imoprtant, how old it is and for what time you registed it. For example - if you have spam site probably you wont register it for 5 or 6 years. The best CMS for blogging is Drupal (i mean for SEO), not wordpress or something else. It’s very easy to optimize it and the search engines loves drupal, this is the truth.. And don’t forget to use clean urls and to include your keywords in it! I think that this is everything that one seo begginer must know. So have fun with your sites :))
It’s very usefull article - thanks for sharin’ it.
mahesh
November 19th, 2008 at 5:53 amNice work….
Prathapan Sethu
November 19th, 2008 at 10:36 amSearch engines are also going to give more points to content that’s changing, so keep your site updated.
Also, duplicate content is penalized, so if you have the same content in multiple websites or pages, tell the search engine bots not to index the duplicate content using robots.txt.
Prathapan Sethu
November 19th, 2008 at 10:43 amSearch engines do not like broken links or page-not-found. If you plan to remove a page, do a permanent redirect, so that the indexed link does not break.
SEO Technology
November 26th, 2008 at 12:50 amGreat, Very Use full article.
Thank u
Siaar
December 11th, 2008 at 10:13 amGreat Design, Great Content, It really helped me. I followed almost all techniques and I am getting good results. Thanks a lot.
Tim
December 17th, 2008 at 10:39 amAn excellent overview - well done.
One comment I would add regarding content is to conduct keyword research to help ensure that you are using phrases and terms that people actual use in searches. For example, you might use the term ‘lucite’ internally but through keyword research find that a lot more people search on ‘acrylic’, and therefore, you would want to consider using ‘acrylic’ in your copy instead.
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