Organizing Your Website Content
It's all very well having a trusted website, but what about the content of your site? Search engines are hunting for original content that's easy to read. For a search engine, 'easy to read' means a web page that follows the basic principles of HTML - label each page of your website with a title, put in some meta information to tell the search engine about the page, and put the visible headline of the page in a <h1> tag, subtitles in <h2> etc. This is known as 'document structure'. The following guide explains in plain English how to organize content on you web pages.
Once you have read and understood our guide, find out how optimized your web pages are with our search engine optimization tool .
Choose your keywords and keyphrases.People have to type something into a search engine to get results and find what they're looking for. What they type in is known as 'keywords' or 'keyphrases'. If I'm looking for a wedding photographer in Northampton, I might type in the keyphrase 'wedding photographers Northampton'.
Your first step in optimizing your website is to think about what keyphrases a potential customer of yours would type into a search engine. Go to a search engine and type in such a keyphrase yourself and see what kind of results you get. The more general the keyphrase (such as 'wedding photographers') the more results will be returned. This is something to consider, because optimization is all about getting your website as high as possible in the result listings. The more results you are competing with, the harder it is to get your website on the first page of results (which is ultimately where you want to be). Web designers who optimize sites often ask their clients to come up with more obscure keyphrases to shorten the odds of getting a top-10 result. This is good advice. Let's go with the keyphrase 'wedding photographers Northampton' as an example.
Dedicate one single page to your chosen keyphrase.Now you've found your keyphrase, it's time to optimize your site! Another trick web designers use is to dedicate a single page to this keyphrase - so you'd choose a page for the 'wedding photographers Northampton' keyphrase. This is the page that will be found when people type in 'wedding photographers Northampton' into their search engine. If you have 50 pages on your website, you can optimize your site to 50 keyphrases.
Rule #1:
Consider each page to be an entrance to your site - and there are 50 ways to get into your website via 50 pages. In this example, let's say you choose your "About us" page for the keyphrase 'wedding photographers Northampton'. After all, the "About us" describes your wedding photography business that is situated in Northampton.
Rule #2: Make sure your keyphrase is relevant to the page you choose - that is very important for two reasons:-
1. It will be far easier to optimize a web page that is relevant to the keyphrase.
2. You want to get targetted traffic to your website |
Now we're ready to optimize the chosen page.Optimize the page's filenameCheck the filename of your chosen page. In the example, we are editing the "About us" page. Let's assume the page's filename is "about.html" - we want to change that to feature our keyphrase. For example, rename it as "established_wedding_photographers_of_Northampton.html" or something that features the keyphrase. Search engines like descriptive URLs very much. Keep the keyphrase's words in the right order. Separate words with an '_' underscore or a '-' hypen.
Optimize the page's TITLE Check the title of your page (between the <TITLE> and </TITLE> tags in HTML). You want to feature the keyphrase there - such as "Professional Wedding Photographers in Northampton" - make sure the title makes sense and is descriptive too.Optimize the page's META description You may have heard of "Meta tags" - normally the first thing web designers talk about when you mention SEO to them. This is the part of your webpage that holds information of what your page is about. It's meant to be helpful to search engines, but because of an inordinate amount of SPAM abuse over the years (often by so-called web designers), search engines have chosen to look at meta tags as less important. However, they should not be ignored.
Make sure your website has the following HTML below your TITLE tag
<meta name="Description" content="put your description here"> The 'put your description here' part needs to be changed to feature your keyphrase. It's very important you use a clear, concise description of the page here - because this is what people will read when they find your result in the search engine. Example : "We are professional wedding photographers based in Northampton. Our rates start from £250 per wedding."
This example not only features each word of your keyphrase (in the right order), but actually entices the user to click on the result (well, if £250 is cheap for a wedding photographer in Northampton!). It's not ALL about optimization of course - your text should also sell your services to encourages users to click on the result. This is a mistake many web designers have made when optimizing sites - too much optimization, not enough readable, compelling text.
Optimize the page's META keywordsMake sure your website has the following HTML below your meta description:-
<meta name="Keywords" content="wedding photographers Northampton, another keyword, another keyword "> You can see in the above example - this is where you place keywords that are relevant to the page. Another mistake web designers often make : too many keywords. Don't put too much here - perhaps 8 to 10 comma-separated keyphrases/keywords. Put your specific keyphrase that is dedicated to the page FIRST ('wedding photographers Northampton').Your page's content & 'keyphrase density'. 'Keyphrase density' really means the prevalence of the keyphrase in the main content area of your web page. This prevalence is normally measured as a perentage. So let's say you have 1000 words on your page, and your keyword is 'wedding'. This keyword is used 10 times. That's a prevalence of 1%. For a large body of text, a density between 2-3% is ideal. Shorter lengths of text you can go as high as 7 or 8% since you're not having to use so many instances and your text can still look natural. A mistake some web designers make is to put in the keyphrase too many times. Don't go overboard here - your actual content will start to suffer by sounding artificial and deliberately optimized if you try to insert the keyword too much. It's not a case of more is more. If you use a keyphrase like 'wedding photographers Northampton', it's a little easier as it counts 3 words here. So in a body of 1000 words, you'd need to just insert the phrase 7 times (21 words) to get 2% density which is about right. You don't need to enter the keyphrase EXACTLY as it is, because often it doesn't make sense in a sentence - you can turn 'wedding photographers Northampton' into 'wedding photographers in Northampton' or something like that - just make sure the words of your keyphrase stay in the same order and are close together.
Use <h1> and <h2> tags A good web designer uses <h1> tags for on-page, visible titles. An <h1> tag just means it's the most prominent visible title on the page. Example:-
<h1>Professional Wedding Photographers of Northampton</h1>
Only one <h1> title per page, and include it as near the top of the page as possible. Include your keyphrase in the title.
For subtitles, use <h2> tags which denote titles of secondary importance.
Don't put javascript on your page; link to it instead.Javascript gets in the way of search engines finding out about the real content of your page. You can still use it, but don't put it on your page - link to it like this:-
<script type="text/javascript" src="general.js"></script>
In the above example, make sure you copy and paste all your javascript into an empty document, then save it as "whatever.js".
Testing your page to see how optimized it is for your keyphrase.We have developed our own keyword density tool for you to use when optimizing your web pages.
This will let you know exactly how optimized your page is for your keyphrase, taking a lot of the tedium out of SEO.
Final notes.We have illustrated the fundamental principles of search engine optimization. It is by no means exhaustive, but you will see tangible improvements in your search engine rankings if you methodically follow the above steps when optimizing your sites. At first glance, it all sounds very pedantic and rather boring, but it will soon become second nature - good web designers use these methods as standard.
Remember also that no matter how well optimized your pages are, your text has to make sense to your visitors. We've seen some optimized sites, even web designer's own websites, that sound gibberish since they just pepper the content with keyphrases everywhere. If you keep the content fresh, interesting and compelling, visitors will return to your site and recommend it.
Also, when linking to other sites, make sure they will be useful to your visitor, and related to your industry.
Good luck with your website - and remember it can take up to 6 months to see the true benefits of all your hardwork - and that includes keeping the site up-to-date with fresh content. Search engines will reward you if you are honest, patient and diligent - that is an absolute 100% guarantee. The benefits are long-term, and you can certainly run a successful online business from one website alone, as a number of our customers are doing.
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