Hitting that #1 natural result spot in Google for a high traffic, nicely converting search term is seen as the path to Website success. Sadly, there can only be one number one, while there is always an increasing amount of competitor websites. Donal Langen, SEO Consultant at Stream:20, offers 20 ways to get that lucrative top spot…
Following these top 20 SEO tips will give you the advantage over most of your online competition and may even get you onto that sought after 1st page:
1. Do proper keyword research get as much input as possible from colleagues, competitor sites, focus groups or random strangers. The idea is to get inside your potential site visitors’ heads and find out what they would type into a search box to find your site-pages.
2. Page Titles Each page on your site should have a unique page title, with a consistent structure along the lines of: “Main page Keyword – call to action – site/brand name” – all within 66 characters.
3. Clean up your site code Messy code might mean the search crawlers can’t even read your page, let alone index it in their results. Make sure that as much JavaScript and CSS is referenced from external files, that your HTML and other on-page code doesn’t contain errors, and then your pages will be properly crawled by search engines.
4. Page Headlines H1 tags – Each page should have ‘one’ unique page headline, that contains a main relevant keyword, you can then use H2 and H3 tags multiple times for sub-headers containing other relevant terms.
5. Use Alt and Title elements – Search engines still mainly view your website in terms of text, so make sure that any non-text items like images, video, flash etc. have proper text descriptions in the Alt or Title elements. These should primarily be descriptive, but can also contain key phrases.
6. Internal Site Link Structure – Search crawlers navigate around your site through your navigation and internal links, so make sure your most important pages have the most internal links pointing to them, and that no individual page is orphaned (stuck without any internal links pointing to it!)
7. Meta Description tag – Even though this tag isn’t used for finding your site, it can be the difference between a searcher clicking on your result or not. Make sure you use 155 characters to get a unique two-line description of your site page. This is your Search results’ marketing message that will make your results stand out from the crowd.
8. Use Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml files – The robots.txt file is really to tell the search crawler (robot) where not to go on your site, this would include code directories, pdf directories or even terms & conditions and legal pages, in fact any page you would prefer not to appear in the search results. A sitemap.xml file is the opposite, here you are listing all those pages you want the search engines to index, and can even add other information like page importance or update rate. Google points out that this doesn’t guarantee that they will index your page but at least they know about them.
9. Use Web Master Tools – Webmaster Tools tells you what Google already knows about your site, and tells you about any crawl issues it might have with it. The information they give you is very valuable to making your site as search friendly as possible.
10. Use Analytics – Having proper information about your site is essential, so long as you can get to it and actually act on it. Proper analytics will highlight any technical problems with your site, can improve conversion by testing page variations, and basically will make your site perform better and be more relevant and useful to your target audience.
11. Engage with your visitors – allowing user interaction and comments on your site not only gives you constantly updated content, but also gives your site visitor greater connectivity with your site by being able to comment on it. Obviously, this needs to be monitored, but the benefits of an engaged audience outweigh the odd negative comment you should be acting on. Search engines love updated content on web-pages, and this is an easy way to achieve that on a regular basis.
12. Are you Social? – If possible and relevant then get a social media strategy and become part of the online conversation, create a Facebook group, widget or game; get on forums and blogs, get organised and get commented on. With Search engines including real-time search results, having a social media presence will increase your chances of appearing higher in the search results.
13. Universal Search – Since Google started mixing in other search elements into its web results pages, it has been essential to optimise your site to take advantage of these verticals. Make sure your site is optimised for Images, Vidoes, Blogs, News, and Local search (Maps); and you might get a leg up over your competition.
14. Are you submitted? – Just because you have optimised your site, don’t assume your are actually on those search engines and directories. Check that you are, and if not then submit your site onto them, using the most relevant keywords, descriptions and categories.
15. Blow your own trumpet – If your site/company does anything worth mentioning then mention it, have a News section and put out press releases to tell everybody how wonderful your cause, product, service, staff really are!
16. Inbound links – Perhaps that most important ranking factor for your site and the hardest one to achieve. Google says that if you create unique interesting site content then people will naturally link to it. However, most people can’t wait for this to happen, since having more topically related inbound links with keyword rich anchor text will get you ranked higher and get more traffic. So be proactive and have a link-building strategy to acquire quality links into your site.
17. Review existing inbound links – Since getting new links into your site is quite a task, you should review the existing links that already point to your content, and correct any errors, make sure they are not pointing to dead pages, and even get them to change the anchor text to something better than just your URL.
18. Don’t forget about your site – Search engines like sites to be updated frequently, and have new content added. So create new pages, and expand on those existing pages. Site blogs, and News and Comments sections are a good way to achieve this.
19. 404 Page not found – You’d be surprised at how many of your visitors reach a “page not found” page on your site. You need to create a custom 404 page which is helpful and aims to keep that visitor on your site by supplying useful information and navigation/links to relevant areas of your site. This means those people arriving at a page not found on your site are more likely to stay on-site.
20. People act differently online – A true basic fact, but in terms of optimising a site, remember that someone will read your pages differently than they would paper content. Online your visitors scan a page, view ‘hotspots’ on the page and ignore other areas, so avoid anything that looks like an advert. Visitors want conclusions up-front and detail later, like bullet-points. Make sure you take this into account when you build your pages, so that your important content is found and not lost to your user. This will also affect how you introduce ‘keywords’ into your content in an effective and user friendly way. Building your site so that it is optimised well for your site visitor is the best way to ensure it is well optimised for search engines.
By Donal Langen
SEO Consultant
Stream:20
http://www.stream20.com/expertise.php?p=seo
