I finally got round to updating my websites so that they were properly set up to be indexed in Google and other search engines. It was a new beginning, because I had neglected these tasks for so long. Admittedly I was away travelling for a year and I came back to find all had changed. So I thought I’d better understand more about search engine placement and make it a rule to do the right things at set up for each new domain.

Every good webmaster should know how websites are ranked, and every good webmaster should know the current SEO trends. Most clients take it for granted that their websites will be in the google searches, some don’t really care. It all depends how a website is going to be marketed, but a webmaster should be aware of the rules and incorporate them into the build, so I will reveal what I have learned while ‘going back to my roots’ as the saying goes.

In this post I will be referring to Google rules although these are good for most the search engines available. I won’t be going into too much detail but at least make the reader aware of what a webmaster should be doing for a website and this goes for blogs too.

Good design practice while coding a website.

Make sure you are aware of WC3 rules. Validating your html code and eliminating errors for each page will be important. You can check each of your pages at this address http://validator.w3.org/.  Don’t ignore this, however I know it’s not easy for some designs but do the best you can.

Consider your pages as seperate entities.

EACH page should be reasonably optimized for a keyword phrase. Phrasing matters and you will want that page to rank high when someone enters that phrase in the search engines. If you take note of this technique, you will get results, so make it into a habit when creating future pages.

The title tag is crucial for search engines.

The text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page. In addition, all major crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings. For Wordpress Blogs use the excellent plugin ‘All in one SEO pack‘

For further optimization, if you intend for these pages to rank well for certain keyword phrases, make sure EACH Page has a DIFFERENT title tag using the desired keyword phrase for that page. Google doesn’t like duplicate title tags throughout a website.

Meta description tags.

The same above rules apply. Use up to 160 characters to describe EACH page and with a few hints of your desired keyword phrases for that page. Dont make it too short or too long.

Meta Keyword tags.

Same rules apply, list a few relevant keywords for EACH page and DO NOT stuff it full of irrelevant keywords, just the select few that you use in the same title tag and description tag.

Add ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags to all your images

( I put title tags alongside alt tags for Firefox browsers to see) Google loves ‘alt’ tags. Its important for them know about each image as well as for the benefits for partially sighted and blind users. DON’T stuff them with too many keywords, only one related keyword phrase is enough. Besides this also helps in search engine image searches.  eg. <img src=”images/logo.gif” alt=”site logo” title=”Site Logo”>

Use anchored text links through out your website.

It tells search engines what the page is about. Used wisely, it boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google. eg This is an web builder secrets anchored link

Avoid canonicalisation of your URL.

Canonicalisation occurs when a website is able to be accessed via both www.website.com and website.com and it is quite possible you could damage your rankings if Google sees this a duplicate content. The best practice is to allow search engine crawlers to only search one version at the outset. I use a some code in the .htaccess file in the root directory of the website server.

Get a Webmaster Tools account with Google

Validate your website and  add an ‘xml’ Google sitemap. Google will quickly see what pages should be crawled and they will also be able to make extensive reports. Making regular checks you will be able to see if there are errors at your website, where the errors are and what you should do to correct them. Webmaster Tools is very useful for webmasters who like to fine tune for search engines.

How do you make a Google sitemap?

Briefly the sitemap file Google likes is an .xml file that indexes every available page. I use a simple sitemap script from that generates xml sitemap files automatically on the server.

Finally, you may want to know more about the visitors to your sites and where they come from and what keywords they use to reach your pages. It’s a good idea to get a  Google Analytics account and drop analytics tracking (ga.js) code into your web pages and you will be able to see extensive reports whenever you login. Most  people prefer Google Analystics to the limited statistics a user sees in there web hosting CPanel.

Dont forget to add your url to the search engines if you have are launching a new domain.

Submit to Google

Submit to Yahoo

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!