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By Jane McLain
Search engine optimization is on every webmaster's mind these days. Achieving a favorable ranking for the right keywords can mean a steady stream of targeted traffic to your site, and all for free - that's hard to beat. The key to high search engine rankings is structuring your website correctly, including plenty of content that is relevant to your keywords, and making sure your website is spider-friendly. You can use this checklist to make sure all of your Web pages can be found, indexed and ranked correctly:
Your website is themed. Your site deals with an identifiable theme
which is obvious from the text on the home page and reinforced by all the other
pages on your site. In other words, all the individual Web pages relate to each
other and deal with various aspects of some central theme. The text on your home
page should state clearly what that theme is and what your website is about, and
the other pages should reinforce that.
Your Web pages have enough high quality, relevant content. Spiders
come to your website looking for content. If a page doesn't have much content,
or the content doesn't appear closely related to the page's title and your
website's theme, the page probably won't be indexed or if it is indexed it won't
rank well. Search engines love quality content and lots of it - content is what
Web searchers are looking for and search engines try to provide.
Your website's navigational structure is relatively flat. You don't
want important pages to be too "deep" within your website, meaning it takes
several clicks to get there from the home page. Search engines typically index
the home page first, then gradually index other pages on a site over time. Many
spiders are programmed Free Article to only go three layers deep - if some of your important
content is buried deeper than that, it may never be found and indexed at
all.
You've created a unique "Title" tag for each page. The title is one
of the most important aspects of any Web page from an SEO standpoint, especially
for msn (which is the most important search engine to optimize for). Don't
use a generic title for all your pages, use the keywords your targeting for that
page and keep it brief but descriptive.
You use the "Description" meta tag. Contains a highly descriptive
sentence about the content and purpose of your page, and contains your most
important keyword phrase early in the sentence. Not all of the search engines
will display this "canned" description when they list the page in search
results, but many of them will, so it's worth getting it right.
You use the "Keywords" meta tag. As with the meta tag description,
not every search engine will use the keywords meta tag. But some will use it and
none will penalize you for having it. Also, having a short list of the keywords
you're targeting will help you write appropriate content for each page. The
keyword tage should contain your targeted keyword phrase and common variations,
common misspellings and related terms. Make sure your keywords relate closely to
the page content and tie into the overall theme of your Echolist Directory
site.
Your keywords are included in the visible page content, preferably high
up on the page. You have to achieve a balance here - you want to include
keyword phrases (and variations) a number of times within your text, but not so
many times that you appear to be guilty of "keyword stuffing". The trick is to
work the keywords into the text so that it reads as naturally as possible for
your site visitors. Remember, you can incorporate keywords into any Web page
element that is potentially viewable by site visitors - header text, link text
and titles, table captions, the "Alt" attribute of the image tag, the "title"
attribute of the link tag, etc.
Every page of your website can be reached by search engine spiders.
This is critical - if your pages can't be found, they can't be indexed and
included in search results, let alone rank well. Search engines use spiders to
explore your website and index the pages, so every page must be accessible by
following text links. If pages require a password to view, are generated by a
script in response to a query, or have a long and complicated URL, spiders may
not be able to read them. You need to have simple text links to the pages you
want indexed.
You've included a site map. Unless your site is very small, it's a
good idea to create a site map with text links that you link to the site map
from your home page. In addition to a link, include descriptive text for
containing the relevant keywords for each page.
You link to your most important pages from other pages on your
site. Internal links help determine page rank since they show which pages
of your site are most important. The more links you have to have to a page,
relative to other pages on your site, the more importance search engines will
assign to it.
You use keywords in your link text. When you create a text link to
another page on your site, use that page's targeted keywords as the text for the
link (inside the anchor tags that create the link). Make it as descriptive as
possible. For example, a link that says "Premium Customized Widgets" is much
better than one that says simply "Product Page", and indicates to search engine
spiders what that linked page is about.
Your site doesn't use frames. If possible, don't use frames on any
page you want to get indexed by search engines. If you feel you simply must use
frames for a page, then also make use of the "noframes" HTML tags to provide
alternative text that spiders can read (and make that text descriptive rather
than just a notice that "This site uses frames etc. etc.").
You don't use automatic page redirects. Don't make any pages
automatically redirect the visitor to another page (the exception is a page
you've deleted for good - in which case you should use a "301 redirect", a
permanent redirect which is acceptable to search engines).
Your important content is in plain text and not contained in
images. Search engine spiders can't "read" content in JPEG, GIF, or PNG
files. If you really feel that using an image rather than text is crucial to
your design, at least put the same text in the image's "Alt" tag (or in the
"title" tag if you're using the image as a hyperlink).
Your important content is not contained in Flash files. Flash is a
wonderful technology, but unfortunately spiders don't have the required "plugin"
to view Flash files. As a result, Flash content is mostly inaccessible to search
engine spiders. Some can find and follow hyperlinks within the Flash file, but
unless those links lead to pages with readable HTML content this won't help you
much. Don't create all-Flash pages for any content you want to get indexed -
instead, put that content in the HTML portion of the page.
Links and keywords are not hidden inside JavaScript code. If your
links use JavaScript to direct the user to the appropriate page (for instance, a
drop-down list) or important content is contained within JavaScript code (when
it's displayed dynamically using DHTML, for instance) search engine spiders
won't be able to "see" it. You can, however, use the "noscript" HTML tags to
provide an alternative that can be read by spiders.
You've optimized every important page of your website individually.
Don't stop at your home page. Take the trouble to optimize any page which has a
reasonable chance of being indexed by the major search engines, targeting
appropriate keywords for each. If you face a lot of competition it may be nearly
impossible to get a top ranking for your home page, but you can still get a lot
of search engine traffic to your site from other pages which are focused on very
specific keyword phrases.
You didn't duplicate content. Each page of your site should have
unique content that distinguishes it from every other page on your site.
Duplicating content or having pages that are only slightly different might be
seen as "search engine spamming" (trying to manipulate search engine
results).
You provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your
site. Somewhere on your site state your policies about other people
linking to your site and provide the wording you'd like them to use in their
link. You want to encourage other people to link to your site, preferably using
link text and a description that reflect the keywords for that page. For their
convenience provide the ready-made HTML code for the link - not everyone will
use it, but most often they will use your preferred text as a courtesy as long
as it is truly descriptive of your site and doesn't contain "marketing
hype".
You provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your
site. Somewhere on your site state your policies about other people
linking to your site and provide the wording you'd like them to use in their
link. You want to encourage other people to link to your site, preferably using
link text and a description that reflect the keywords for that page. For their
convenience provide the ready-made HTML code for the link - not everyone will
use it, but many will use your preferred text as a courtesy as long as it
doesn't contain "marketing hype".
Important hyperlinks are plain text links and not image links or image
maps. Text links are better from an SEO standpoint than image links, as
spiders can't read text from an image file. If you feel you really must use a
graphic as a link, at least include a text description which (including the
relevant keywords) by using the "title" attribute of the link tag.
Your website is free of coding errors and broken links. HTML coding
errors and non-working links can keep search engine spiders from correctly
reading and indexing your pages. For that reason, it's a good idea to use a Web
page validation utility to check your HTML code to make sure it's
error-free.
Jane McLain is a Web developer and SEO specialist and the webmaster of EClaunchsite.com, an online resource center for netrepreneurs with tools and information to help you plan, build, launch and grow your e-business.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com
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