SEO 101: 10 Steps to Boost SEO
Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 in SEO
Ten Steps to Boost Your SEO
The vast majority of sites we see out there have glaring SEO errors that are very easy to fix and can make a massive difference to how Google – and other search engines – rank your site. SEO is all about understanding what search engines see when they visit your server, putting out the welcome mat and making it as friendly as possible to the ‘bots.
The final version of a page that you see in your browser is not what the search engine spider sees – they see the underlying HTML code like this:
Consequently, a major part of SEO is optimizing this HTML so that it gives the best representation of the content to the spiders. You can see what a page looks like in HTML from any browser by selecting the ‘View Source’ option.
Here are 10 quick-wins that will improve the index-ability of your site, and therefore improve your rankings, compared to not doing them:
1. Using the TITLE tag.
This is staggeringly important and yet so many pages are missing titles or, worse yet, have vanilla names like “Home” or “Intro”. Ensure every page in your site has a useful title – this is what determines the text that Google shows in the results as a headline. Don’t duplicate titles across the site – ensure each page has a relevant name (“My Company – Accounting Services – 401K advice”).
2. Using the Description tag.
Also so important and so often neglected. This provides the subheading for Google’s search engine results and if you don’t provide it, Google will select one arbitrarily. Try to produce a compelling and accurate description of the page in around 150 characters.
3. Using H1 tags for Headings.
And make them keyword rich. H1 is the highest-level headline tag and search engines know that they are a good guide to page content. The same is true of H2 tags, which are similar to sub-headings. Both H1 and H2 tags help provide a sense of structure for the document.
4. Use keyword-driven permalinks where possible.
If you’ve ever seen URLs like http://xyz.com/site.php?id=XXX?topic=12933484, you’ll know as a human these are hard to remember. For search engines, they’re also hard to interpret, since the spider doesn’t know what site.php does and what the submitted parameters do. Most web servers are capable of using permalinks, which look like http://xyz.com/shopping/shoes/nike, and this allows you to use keywords to indicate what the content is about. Keywords in URLs are powerful for SEO and are often overlooked.
Tip: If you use WordPress, permalinks can be switched to /%postname%/ from the Dashboard, which takes less than 30 seconds.
5. Buy a keyword-rich domain name.
If you haven’t yet established your domain name, this is a good time to look for domain names that contain the keywords you want to target. A limo service in Dallas called “John’s Cars” would have better success in SERPs with the domain dallas-limo.com than johns-cars.com. URLs are good indicators of likely content, so buy ones that reflect the keywords you’re targeting.
6. Check for broken links and errors.
The spider tries its best to understand your HTML, and then go to every link on every page. When it hits bad code, it may either stop or misinterpret the content. Check every page on your site for CSS validation and use Google Webmaster Tools to find where missing links and potential problems lie. Both services are fast and free.
7. Using descriptive links.
Links are the very fabric of the Internet, yet we often ignore their importance. “Get an full SEO evaluation by clicking here” is a great example of using a link poorly, since the destination is described by the word ‘here’. It’s better to say: “Get your full SEO evaluation now”, where the link is accurately described.
8. Add your pages to social bookmarking sites.
It’s free, it’s easy – go through your site and add every useful page to StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit. Not only will be adding inbound links, but users of these services may discover your website using those tools.
9. Add ALT text to images.
Search engines can’t see images well – so help them out by supplying ALT text. This is especially true for company logos or pictures of individuals, but should really apply to any image.
10. Add a sitemap to your server.
A sitemap is a small XML file that describes the contents of your site and the relationship between all the links. While the spiders can often figure this out, a sitemap is the easy way to help the spider out. Most CMS systems have automatic sitemap plugins, and there are services that will create these for you.
These are the main tactical and mechanical tips for helping SEO on your site, and while there are hundreds of other things you can do, just following these will give most sites a better chance of ranking higher in the results.
SEO is definitely a case of the 80:20 rule in most cases. Especially in the realm of localised niche markets.