The following document explains in detail the work necessary to improve PageRank and have a higher position on the SERP. (Search Engine Results Page). This document is intended as a simple guide for the design team and business owners to be “on the same page” of the basics of what is involved in the website optimization process, following this guide in its entirety will not necessarily get you maximum results, but it is a good foundation of SEO practice.
Every title will contain the name of the company, but every title will have a different description based on the content of the page. The titles are typically the most important and first thing people see on search-engine results pages and thus must contain the company name and a desrciption using some of the targeted keywords.
Example Title : Phone Company X – Cell Phones, Wireless Services, Accessories, and Affordable Calling Plans.
Every page will have the same keywords, but using too many keywords will have negative results- business owners need to brainstorm as many as they can, then narrow them down to about 20 of the best. What is more important about the keywords is targeting specific ones rather than as many as possible-- also, the meta keywords tag itself is not nearly as relevant as is how the content of the page itself uses the keywords. When writing up content for a website or page, please keep your targeted (15-20) keywords in mind. Try to focus on one keyword per page and write content relating to that keyword.
There are many tools available to help with keywords, please look at :
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
http://keywordfinder.org/index.php
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
http://www.pagerank.net/seo-tools/
Because search-engines and other sites use this in their link descriptions, one large paragraph of text is usually the best for the Meta Description. The Meta Description is not as important as the rest of the optimazations, but it is important for crawlers and spiders to have when helping to describe inbound links.
Relevant page content has to have H1 tags, short, key-word specific sentences to describe each block of content, and then (sparingly) keywords within the content paragraphs as well.
Please keep this in mind when typing out the content, using a keyword a few times sparingly within the content is ideal- but too much can have negative results. Links with specific keywords in them is important as well.
Checking the Keyword Density with tools such as this may be highly beneficial: http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/
Keyword density typically follows this order:
-Keyword #1 in Title Tag
-Keyword #1 in the Page URL (friendly URL)
-Keyword #1 in the Main Heading (H1 or H2)
-Keyword #1 in the first paragraph of content
-Keyword #1 at least 3 times in the body content.
Part of the page generation process will involve creating custom URL's based on the pages content. This is an important part of SEO because search engines look at the entire URL, as well as its sub-pages.
Links within content should be meaningful and stick to keyword-links and must contain anchor text descriptions (Typically less than 60 words).
An example of a bad link would be "Click here". URL's should be "Friendly", meaning simple and descriptive, dashes to separate keywords can be used as well. A good example would be: http://www.website.com/company-members/members.html (instead of: http://www.website.com/blogpage&?=53534). Make sure every link on the page goes somewhere and is not Broken, a Broken link leading to a 404 Not Found page will lower your page rank.
The Google Webmaster Tool will help find broken links.
H1 tags target the exact same keywords as the title and keywords metatags do, except they are H1 tags used throughout the website and its content. Repeating these tags once or twice per page gives a better PR ranking overall.
A relative new but very important part of SEO because search-engines keep track of what OTHER websites are saying about your company. If there is a lot of activity on a Blog page or community website, the page rank goes higher as well.
Having a Blog and keeping it separate is integral for a higher page rank.
The blog must be on a sub-domain as well. Ex: http://blog.website.com
Clean code is imperative to SEO- stick to strong and bold tags, H1 tags, 'p' tags, 'ul' for lists.
Descriptive alt tags are important to have because search-engines look through image-descriptions. For example, "Julia" instead of "Julia McMurphy, Director of Marketing". The more relevant and descriptive the alt tag the better.
Part of SEO Optimization involves creation of a sitemap.xml file that is handed to Google. This encourages internal linking and makes sure crawlers/spiders can get to every page related to your website, not to mention making the page easier to navigate and easier to find the relevant content.
The following factors will help your website find a higher place on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
(PR) is determined by the following:
Congratulations on reading the SEO Guide! SLDS can install basic SEO for your website, let us know you would like Basic SEO.
Website (SEO) Optimization Guide © Copyright 2007 Stuart Lawson Design Services (SLDS), All Rights Reserved **** DO NOT DISTRIBUTE ****
