Improving Search Engine Optimization-SEO Part 2
Part 2
This follow-up to our last blog addresses what makes an ideal webpage for search engines, and some things to avoid:
The ideal webpage for search engines will have the following components:
Headings:
- Each Page needs a heading that describes that page.
Images:
- Images are very important to your website and to search engines. Every page on your website should have at least one image. This image is labeled with your page heading.
Text:
- Each page should have at least 100-300 of text, descriptive of the page contents.
Keyword or Phrase:
- A short phrase or keyword, again descriptive of the specific webpage. Ideally, this would also be the Heading and page name.
Description:
- A short description of 120-150 words, containing page heading, and keyword, describing the page. This description is what will be shown on searches
The following are examples of what to avoid in order to obtain the best possible search engine optimization:
Remove Stop Words:
- Most search engines do not consider extremely common words in order to speed up search results or to save disk space. These filtered words are known as “Stop Words”. If your page heading title contains one or more “Stop Words”, you may not be successfully accessed by all search engines.
Some of the most common, stop words: a, as, the, is, at, which, us, why, and on.
- Our Web Design Team will create or re-word your heading or page title to eliminate stop words whenever possible.
Example: Most websites contain a Contact Us and About Us page. When we design your website, we will create a page heading, Contact (Your company name). We do the same thing for the About Us page. However, the menu item your visitors see will still say Contact Us, About Us
No Images on webpage:
- Traditionally, pages such as Contact Us and About Us do not have images, but whenever possible we will add images to your pages, to improve your search engine results.
Over-using keyword:
- Using your keyword too many times on a page will actually hurt your SEO results.
How to know if your pages are getting the best search engine exposure:
- The highest mark for your website is green! If you see a green dot next to the page name, you can be assured that web page is meeting or exceeding all of the requirements for Search Engine Optimization.
- If the dot is orange, that is OK. It usually means that the page meets most of the standards, but not all. This is common on web pages that are images only with little or no text, or text with no images.
- A red dot is Poor, indicating that the page will probably not be easily found in searches.
- A black dot indicates that the page has not been completed for SEO, and will not be found by search engines.
If you have concerns that your website may not search friendly, contact our Web Design Team. We will review it, and work with you to get your website up to the best search levels!