| When you design a website, it's easy to focus on | | | | page appear more focused, although you should be |
| what your visitors are going to see. What you have | | | | careful not to insert navigation links this way if you |
| to realise, though, is that you're going to have | | | | want the search engines to follow them. |
| another kind of visitor with a completely different | | | | Use Meta Tags. |
| agenda: they're not going to be looking at your | | | | Yes, meta tags are out of fashion, and search |
| pretty logo and they're not going to be passing | | | | engines pay no attention to them any more when it |
| judgement on your background colour. What they're | | | | comes to ranking your site, but they're still important |
| looking for is the content and structure of your page. | | | | in one way: the meta description tag is still often |
| They're the search engine spiders, and they are in | | | | used to decide what text search engines' users see |
| control of probably the largest section of your traffic. | | | | when they find your site in their results! This can be |
| You need to please these spiders if you want your | | | | just as important as the ranking itself - write |
| site to be successful. Here's how. | | | | something here that will look useful to the searcher, |
| Make Your Structure Clear. | | | | and you're more likely to get them to click-through. |
| Resist the temptation to lay your page out in | | | | Don't forget that, while search engines are just |
| non-standard ways: you want it to be very clear to | | | | machines and algorithms, the end result of it all does |
| the search engine where the navigation is, where the | | | | involve a human decision: to click, or not to click? |
| content is, and where the headings are. As a rule, put | | | | Avoid Splash Pages. |
| navigation first in your page. Always use the heading | | | | You might think it's a great idea to have a 'splash' |
| tags (h1, h2, etc.) for headings and sub-headings. | | | | page displaying a full-page version of your logo (or an |
| Avoid using generic span and div tags and only | | | | ad) to every user who arrives at your site, but |
| making things clear to the user through CSS font | | | | search engines really hate that. Using this trick will get |
| sizes: instead, use every 'semantic' HTML tag that | | | | you ranked far lower than you would usually be, so |
| applies to your content. If you're quoting someone, | | | | you should avoid it - it's annoying to visitors anyway. |
| use the blockquote tag; if you're posting program | | | | Include Alt Tags. |
| code, use the code tag. Search engines love this. | | | | Any time you use a graphic, include alt text for it - |
| Keep Keywords Consistent. | | | | especially if there is text in the graphic. Remember |
| It's not usually worth deliberately saturating your | | | | that, as far as search engines are concerned, all your |
| content with keywords in hope of a higher search | | | | graphics might as well just be big black boxes. Test |
| ranking - the engines have pretty much wised up to | | | | by removing all your graphics and seeing if your |
| this tactic - but do make sure that your keywords | | | | content remains relatively intact. If it doesn't, then |
| appear consistently when they occur naturally. For | | | | you'll be turning search engines away. |
| example, for these articles, I have stuck with | | | | Finally, Write Great Content. |
| 'website' throughout, as suddenly writing 'web site' | | | | The key with modern search engines (and, at the |
| instead would bring down my rankings. | | | | same time, the thing you have least control over) is |
| HTML and Javascript. | | | | how many people decide to link to your page from |
| It's worth noting that search engines read HTML, but | | | | their page. How can you make more people link to |
| they don't, in general, read Javascript. That means | | | | you? Make your content useful. Make it something |
| that using Javascript to insert text into your page is | | | | they'll want to quote on their blogs. Content is more |
| a bad idea if you want search engines to see the | | | | King than it's ever been, and the best way to design |
| text. On the other hand, you might want to have | | | | for search engines is to make your content really |
| just the text in HTML and insert all the other parts of | | | | stand out. |
| the page with Javascript: this will tend to make your | | | | |