Search Engine Optimisation - whys & hows

Header Tags  - What are they and Why have them?
Heading tags are a very important element in creating and maintaining a search engine friendly web site or blog. In this some what short but descriptive article, I am going to explain to you what heading tags are and how they can be used on your website for improving your site SEO.

A heading tag defines headers. A header is used to mark sections on your blog or web site. There are six header levels. These levels are as follows: H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. The H1 header tag is the largest font size and H6 is the smallest.

Search engines look for header tags because they are beacons for finding content as well as pathways on your blog or web site. The three most commonly used header tags are: H1, H2, and H3. Sometimes, H4 is used, but not too often. H5 and H6 are rarely used.

Ranking Tips - things that are good to know..
If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.

Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.

Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.comand internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.

Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.

Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.

Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.

Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.

The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.

Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.

If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.

Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.

Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.

Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.

SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.

SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.

Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!

Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.

Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.

You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.

Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.

Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.

Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.

Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.

If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.

A key contributor to SEO is writing good copy that will rank well in search engines. Good copy needs to contain well-researched and varied keywords and concepts based on a web page's topic. It is important that it accurately reflects the site's content and is strategically placed throughout each page.

SEO may involve improving the site's coding, presentation and structure. It may also require fixing problems that could prevent search engines indexing the site properly.

There are always those who claim special knowledge. The reality is, there are no hidden tricks of the trade that will improve your ranking above the things we've mentioned.

Google says:" No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" . There is no priority submit for Google. "

If you think that your website would benefit from being optimised, please contact us and we will review it for you.