A collection of good tips about search engine optimization
Search engines are an important source for obtaining visitors to your website; however there is a lot of competition for the best ranking so the key is to be better prepared than one?s competitors.
Here we have gathered together a number of tips regarding optimization. Follow these tips and you will have made great steps towards winning the battle for the highest rankings on the search engines.
You can, of course, also take a shortcut by using our solutions within, e.g. online store for e-commerce and content management when constructing your websites.
Theme pages
Generally speaking, search engines ?think? very much in themes, among other things, when determining who is the most popular within a theme or topic. If you have several themes it may be beneficial for you to create a website for each theme. If you do not wish to register a domain name for each theme, you can use sub-domains (theme1.yourdomain.dk, theme2.yourdomain.dk, etc.).
Link popularity
Popular search engines such as Google, for example, use link popularity in order to determine how popular a webpage is. In other words, the motto is, if many link to a page it must be interesting. In addition to attempting to have your link registered in all the relevant places, you can do the following:
Internal links: Cross-link your own web pages
Links on own web pages: Use theme pages as described above and ensure that there are links between the pages. In addition, the names of the links should be search sentences for the page you are linking to.
Links from other pages: Find relevant pages by investigating who links to your competitors. You can obtain a list by going to the search engines and typing:
link:competitor-domain.dk
and
link: www.competitor-domain.dk
as well any address for their theme pages (link: theme1.competitor-domain.dk). Then request a link to the same pages ? perhaps offering to swap with a link to your own webpage.
Outgoing links: Make your page an integrated part of a theme by linking to others? relevant pages.
Avoid stop words in titles and descriptions
Some search machines ignore so-called stop words in order to optimize the search. Examples of stop words are ?a, in, to, and?. However, this is most relevant to English language pages. Read more about stop words on Google:
http://www.google.com/intl/da_ALL/help.html#stopwords
On Google you can see if a word is a stop word by writing it in a sentence:
Title tags
Insert a title on your page with a title tag immediately following your head tag. For example:
<html>
<head>
<title>Search engine optimization</title>
Search sentences as title tags
Formulate your title tags so they are consistent with what you expect people to search for. For example:
<title>Good advices regarding search engine optimization </title>
Meta description
Insert a meta tag with a description of each page immediately after your title tag. Write the most important part of your search sentence at the beginning. For example:
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Search engine optimization attracts more visitors to your website">
Meta search word
Next, you must have a meta tag with your search word. You must be aware of the following:
Avoid writing too many (especially repetitive) search words
Prioritise with the most important first
Avoid using commas or other punctuation to separate your search words
Write any variations using both capital and lower case letters, if this is relevant to some search words (e.g. london London).
Example:
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="search engine optimization london London">
Minimum 30 seconds before forwarding
If you have a META REFRESH tag there must be a minimum 30 second pause before you send the visitor to another webpage, otherwise some search engines may view your page as an attempt to deceive it.
Menu following text
If you have e.g. a menu at the top of all of your web pages you should preferably write your html code so that your body text comes before the menu, otherwise you risk the search engines perceiving the menu as the content of your page.
Headings with tags
Wherever possible, write your search words as headings with <h1> or <h2> tags. If the text becomes too big, you can make it smaller using your style sheet (CSS ? read more at http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/)
Introductory words
Some search engines use the first thing you write rather than the meta tag description.
Search word frequency
Whenever possible, ensure that your search words are found in 3-5% of the text. You can check your density using online tools such as http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
Avoid too much repetition
If you repeat your search words too many times, some search engines will perceive it as an attempt to cheat so that you are awarded more points.
Number of words
To some search engines, short pages can be perceived as less interesting. You should therefore, try to have 300 to 750 words on your pages. If your web editor cannot count the words, online tools can be used here as well, such as http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html.
The name of the page
When naming your files, use your search words separated with hyphens (-) or underscores (_). For example:
find-me-here.html
find_me_here.html
Note however, that the use of special characters is not recommended in file names.
Naming graphic files
The same also applies to naming graphic files. For example:
find-me-here.gif
Alt-tags on images
Furthermore, you should write search words with the alt-tag on your images. For example:
<IMG alt="find me here" src="http://www.goldenplanet.dk/find-me-here.gif">
Image Maps and HTML links
If you have an image map, you should also have ordinary links on the page as some search engines will otherwise not be able to move on from there.
Domain names with search words
Some search engines prioritise pages higher if search words are also included in the domain name. For example:
www.find-me-here.dk/page.html
will be prioritised higher than
www.otherdomain.dk/find-me-here.html
based upon the search words "find me here"
You can use these domain names to make theme pages (refer to the above) or pointed towards your "primary" installation.
Unusual search words
You can often be amongst the few in a search if you add search words that are not normally used within your subject.
Files close to the root
Whenever possible, place your files close to the root. For example:
www.yourdomain.dk/find-me-here.html
is better than
www.yourdomain.dk/html/pages/find-me-here.html
Folder names
If you cannot or will not have your files at the root, then name your folders using search words. For example:
www.yourdomain.dk/optimizing/
or
www.yourdomain.dk/placement/
Javascripts at the end
There is a limit to how much most search engines read. You should, whenever possible, place your javascript at the end of your code.
CSS tags names
Name your CSS tags using search words rather than "meaningless? terms. For example:
.search engines {
font-family: arial, verdana, sans-serif;
}
Site map
Add a site map to your webpage with links to all of your pages. However, this should be limited to a maximum of 50 links.
In addition to your links, you should have some text on your site map or many search engines will ignore it. The text could, for example, be a general navigation guide for your page or a short description of the pages (of course, where your search words are included).
Adjustment with robots.txt
If you wish to guide search machines even further, you can do this by using a robots.txt file. Additional information about this can be found at: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html
Avoid writing in small print
If you have text with a very small font size (size 1) some search engines will perceive it as a ?cheat page?.
Beware of link farms and cloaking
You should not add your links to so-called link farms that are just ?cheat pages? with links to achieve better link popularity. Instead, keep to ordinary link swapping as mentioned under link popularity.
In addition, avoid ?miracle offers? that promise to raise your popularity in the search engines by using so-called cloaking (often called many other things ? ask the sales person directly). First of all, cloaking is sheer cheating and secondly you risk being blacklisted if anyone reports the scam via, e.g. http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
More information
Search engine optimization must be targeted and professionally done in order to achieve the best results. Should you wish to discuss the options for your website you are always welcome to contact us on +45 7020 9594 for a no-obligation chat.
You can of course also read more about search engine optimization by searching via Google: search engine optimization or Yahoo!: search engine optimization
In our products for content management and online store we have directly included search engine optimization. This helps to provide our customers with Internet success, which we are naturally glad and proud to be a part of.