Search
Engine Optimization Techniques & Recommendations
These are some pointers that should be kept in mind while developing sites
that depend on Search Engine traffic.
Contact: sales@atlasindia.com
If you need a website developed of any complexity, contact us. We now serve New York city and the tri-state area.
<title>
Tag should focus on 2-3 keywords
Search
engines look at the contents of the <title> tag to determine relevancy.
Your title tag should contain those key phrases that best describe the contents
of your site.
Position of
the <title> tag
The <title> tag should exist above all other tags in your HTML document
and should be about 60-70 characters in length.
Visible Text
It is
very important to have substantial visible text on your site. The copy within
the <BODY> tag should be such that sub-sections within the site are accessible
thru text links and you have your key phrases and keywords well represented
within the copy. If you have graphic links on your pages then try to place a
list of text based links atleast in one part of the page so that sub-sections
and pages can be crawled through by search engine crawlers.
HTML Text Links
As described before - it is highly recommended to have a Text based navigation.
While it may clash with your site's aesthetics - search engines like them.
Rich Content
Several pages with seemingly related content should be linked to the home
page. It is important that all pages have several references in the copy to
key phrases that represent your site. Your job is to engineer the copy in such
a way that it appears 'sane' to the human visitor and 'related' to the home
page to the crawler. Keywords / key phrases should appear on the homepage copy,
if possible several times. Use the headline tag if possible <h1> around
important keywords.
Meta Description
Tag
This is a very important tag and can be upto 200 characters which may consist
of spaces, punctuation, keywords, key phrases. Your description often will appear
in the search results in several engines so make sure that it's well worded
and use your preferred keyphrases to draw a targeted audience.
Meta Keywords
Tag
List keywords, keyphrases but don't repeat them. Instead of single words and
generic phrases use specific phrases if possible.
For example instead of "new york","salons" use "new
york hair salons".
<STYLE>
tags
You may
place the site's description into a <STYLE> tag. This tag exists in the
HEAD of the document and can serve as an additional ranking criteria.
No Hard Returns
Do not
use hard returns within the <title>,<style>,<description>,<keywords>
tags. A hard return is created when you hit an 'ENTER' button.
HTML referring
links
Try to
get the site listed on other sites with a text link that describes your site
using your most preferred keywords and phrases. The more reputable sites these
are - the more it will benefit youe site in terms of ranking.
Free For All Links don't help. So don't post there. Try to exchange links with a few other sites who can provide you with a clean HTML text link.
Use ALT Tags
Increase the keywords density of your site by using ALT tags. ALT tags are the
text that popup when you take your mouse cursor over an image.
Use a Site Map
with Text Links
Use a
site map that has text links to all pages within your site. This ensures that
a visiting search engine spider/crawler gets to all your pages.
Place Javascript
in a separate file on the web server
Don't
clutter your page with Javascript if you have lots of it. Place it in a separate
file and call it using a Javascript one liner. Of course this is not true for
some Javascript that HAS to exist on your page.
Search engines don't index Javascript. So placing it outside enables a cleaner crawl through your site.
Make sure that
you have a good web host
If your
site goes down often due to a poor web server or host it's possible that you
may get de-listed off automated search engines. So spend the extra bux.
Check who is
linking to you
Sometime people
link to you without you requesting it. This is fine. But it's good to know.
So go to altavsita.com and type in ' link:yoursitename' in the search bar without
the quotes.