Easy SEO Tips for Web Site Owners

December 10, 2006 | By Terry Stockdale | In HTML, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Traffic & Linking 

Some easy Search Engine Optimization tips (SEO tips) for helping search engines find and understand your web pages:

  1. Use H1 header tags for your page titles. Sure, graphical images may be prettier, but search engines can not read the text in graphics. Search engines look at the H1 and the Title tag, both, as a base for understanding and classifying the content of a web page.
  2. Do not use the same title for each page. Change your title on each page. The title tag sets the words that show in the top blue bar in IE/Firefox/etc. Again, the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN key to those, too.
  3. Use “alt” tags in all your images. Add them. Alt tags are important for these reasons.:
    • (a) the search engines use the alt tag to understand pictures,
    • the HTMl standards require them for all images,
    • they are what people using non-graphical browsers, including text web browsers and screen-reading visual-assistance devices, use to show (or say) in place of the image,
    • if your image doesn’t display for any reason, the alt tag will be displayed, and
    • IE treats title tags a little differently than do the Firefox, Opera, Netscape and Safari web browsers, when hovering over an image..
  4. Use a title tag for a web page, make sure that the words are pertinent to the image — and contain pertinent keywords from that page. Do not “stuff keywords” into the tags, unless you want the search engines to penalize you.
  5. if you use a title variable in your image tags, make sure that the words are pertinent to the image — and contain pertinent keywords from that page. Do not “stuff keywords” into the tags, unless you want the search engines to penalize you.
  6. If you have a static image in your header, make it into a link. Link it to your Home page. Ititle tag saying “Home” to the Insurance Writer logo, say “Insurance Writer - Specialty Risk Control - Home Page”. Then, turn the image into a link to the home page — not just a static image.
  7. Duplicate the “alt” tags as “title” tags.
  8. Have a sitemap.xml file.

Google defined an XML protocol for sitemaps. Yahoo and MSN recently announced that they will recognize and use the same protocol.

Yahoo already supports the sitemap.xml file format, too. MSN has said they will, too, but their implementation is not ready yet.

Sitemaps are the best way for you to tell the search engines the sites and all the web pages you have. Each site requires its own sitemap.xml file, by the way. And, if you didn’t realize it, the search engines recognize subdomains as “different sites.”

That is, http://seo.drawingontheweb.com (if it existed) would be recognized as a different site by the search engines. Sometimes that’s a pain. Other times, it’s a neat feature. It entirely depends upon you and what you’re trying to do at the time…

Here’s an short blog entry of mine with pointers to Google’s and Yahoo’s sitemap.xml instructions

After checking out a few alternatives, I’m using the free program GSiteCrawler (www.gsitecrawler.com) to create my sitemaps.

I have more than doubled my visitors from search engines in the last 2 months after adding sitemaps. I’ve posted more in my blogs, too, but I think the sitemaps were the major impact.

Tagged: 

Got something to say?