How to optimize your website

Penny Schneck -- Home Accents Today, 5/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Search engine optimization can be an effective way to naturally deliver traffic to your website. Whether the content is a picture, video or an article, there are SEO best practices that you can put into place. Once these best practices have been implemented, your content will be better positioned to place higher on the search engine results page.

Search engines disperse web crawlers to your site in order to view the content available. This information is then interpreted and ranked based upon an algorithm. Each search engine utilizes a different algorithm to generate content rankings. This is something that the companies will never completely release to the public, but we do know that the following tips can help you obtain higher rankings.

Top 10 SEO Tips

1. Meta Title

As far as search engine ranking goes, this could be the most important tag on your website. It is the title you give to each page of your website, and it takes the following form:& title > tag.

Keep the meta title straight forward. Make sure to use correct punctuation and spelling, because this definitely will influence whether people click through to your site from search engine search results. Frequently companies will use the Title tag to list the name of the company or website. Not only does this tell the visitor very little about the content of that particular page, but also it does nothing to tell the web crawler what type of content your page contains. Every page of your website should have a unique title. The title tag should be focused on describing the content of that particular web page in a keyword rich manner. For example, “Penny's Home Shop” does little to boost my search ranking. A better title tag would be “home accessories, lighting and wall decor at Penny's Home Shop.” Enrich your titles with keywords but limit the description to no more than 66 characters.

2. Meta Keywords

Select approximately seven keywords that are very relevant to the content on each page. The meta keywords tag takes the following form:

When you write a meta keywords list, start by scanning the copy on your page. Make a list of the most important terms you see on the page. Then read through the list. Pick the seven terms that most accurately describe the content of the page.

3. Meta Description

The meta description tag usually consists of 25 to 30 words or less and uses no more than 165 characters. Again, make sure your meta description tag is relevant to the content on the page. Following is an example:

4. ALT Tags

Web crawlers cannot read photos or other images so you need to use an alt tag to define what an image is about. Select keywords to describe the image and provide a brief description. An example of an ALT tag looks like this:

5. Anchor Text

Anchor text are the words that make up a link; they are the words that turn your mouse cursor into a finger-pointing hand. For example, in the sentence, “I really like to go to this store,” “this store” is anchor text for the link. Select keywords that relate to the content on the page you are linking to as the anchor text. The following is the proper way to create an anchor text:

Anchor Text

6. Link to relevant content

When linking to exterior websites it is best to have the link point to content of a very similar nature. Reach out to other businesses or organizations/groups with interests and hobbies that match your product and ask for a reciprocal Web site link. You can post all of these links on one page of your site and simply label it “related links.”

7. Site Map

Make sure your website includes a site map. This is, in essence, a table of contents of the pages on your site. Not only does it offer visitors a convenient way to quickly find the right product or information on your web site, but it also is an effective way to inform search engines about pages on websites that are available for crawling.

8. Robots.txt File

If there is content that is not to be crawled and shown on a search engine's results page then include the file directory in a Robots.txt file. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you're using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google Sitemaps.

9. Submit your site to directories

This allows for search engines to know that the submitted domain exists and to begin crawling it. Start by submitting your URL to the free directories. For a list of some of the top directories visit the SEO Company at www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html

10. Incorporate keywords into your content

Place keywords throughout your content. Be sure to use words on your site that prospects would use in a search. But be sure to avoid the practice of keyword stuffing. This is where keywords are overused and appear too often. Keyword stuffing can get your site blacklisted.

You don't need to be a programmer to check your site's optimization. By taking into account these 10 tips, you improve the chances of your site appearing higher in search results and reaching more prospects who want to buy your products.