SEO Best Practices

How do you know if web site is optimized, over optimized or under optimized?

To begin with, in order to find out if your web site is under-optimized; just do a few basic checks like:

1. Title tag
2. Description tag and
3. Content of the web site

Analyzing the above features will give you an idea whether your website’s  on-page optimization is optimal. If any of the above features does not follow the SEO best practices, you may be missing out on the opportunity to get traffic to your site.  However, if you find that all of the above-mentioned features and more is present in your website, you may want to find out if it is overtly done. It is indeed not a good SEO practice to go overboard and over-optimize your website so much that it might seem like spamming.

For example, if you sell flowers online, your web site should be able to convey the message through the titles,descriptions, and the content of your web site. What you need to check is if these features are able to describe, and tell both the search engines and the visitors what to expect in the site.

If we do a search on your website with the keyword “flowers” and your web site glows like a Christmas tree, it means you are overdoing the keyword bit!

The content and the appearance of keywords have to appear natural, it can’t be forced. Do similar checks on the internal links, on the titles, of every page of your site. If you find that your website is indeed over-optimized, I recommend, you start working on every page and tone it down. It might give you a change to do a content re-evaluation, and that might do wonders for your web site.

If your website is optimized well, and is still not ranking, don’t lose heart. Keep working on your off-page optimization strategy. Remember slow and steady wins the race , and it still holds good.

To best explain the evolution of websites, web site design, and SEO, I will divide this article into three phases-

Phase I- The Bygone era of website design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In the 90s when the internet started to get popular in terms of businesses starting to have a presence on the internet; I remember, it still took a lot of convincing for many businesses, especially small business owners to consider having an online presence. Back then, having an online presence was mostly like displaying a brochure online.  Many of these online businesses would put up their brochures online. That’s it. From the design perspective, businesses would not want to spend much on designing. Sometimes the whole page would be a huge image, sometimes just a few lines of text with contact numbers and an email id. Only a few businesses would perhaps have a full fledged website. As far as Search engine optimization goes, the maximum that Search Engine Optimizers (SEO was coming into being then and there weren’t really that many people doing SEO) could do was to provide titles, descriptions, and keyword Meta tags, and suggest the sites to search engines and search directories. The part that I liked back then is the ease with which web sites could rank with a relevant keyword; understandable since there were hardly that many sites competing, and SEO was even rarer!

Here, I will draw an analogy with constructing a home or building. We need a house, we do not have a house …so what do we do?

We construct a basic, very functional house; it serves the purpose, but is not really visually appealing. It’s just that; a house with rooms and walls to serve a purpose. I guess there wasn’t time or the need to mull over the finer aspects like making it attractive, it has to be constructed, and so be it.

Phase II- The evolving era of website designing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With the availabilty of better tools, and more service providers coming into the field, the internet got a big boost, a new era of web designers were born, they design really beautiful web sites, with frames, with animations, flash, etc. But are these sites user friendly? Can people get to these sites? Do these sites download fast? Are they accessible?
From the SEO perspective, many search engines could not index such websites, because of heavy applications and images, websites took ages to download. That took away the patience of the visitors as well. We created beautiful websites but not many could find them! Finally when they did, they could not find everything on the site!

Again, if we draw an analogy with constructing a building, we construct beautiful home, spend huge amount of money to make it look beautiful, but are these homes safe, practical, and functional too?

Phase III -The new generation of web sites, website designers, and Search Engine Optimizers

We have a new generation of web designers who are familiar with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) nuances, they design keeping in mind various factors so that the end result is a perfect balance beauty and functionality. Striking this cord of course is not easy, one has to test and test and test constantly.

The point that is evident today is that we will see designers, developers, and Search Engine Optimizers work together. Today, almost everyone who has access to the internet has either shopped online, has downloaded eBooks, bought tickets, and much more. Websites are getting better and better, search engines results are very relevant these days.

And again, drawing an anology with constructing buildings; we have multi storied complexes that are functional and yet are not bad looking. A good amount of time is spent on planning and ensuring that there is a perfect marriage of beauty and functionality. The buildings are modern, eco friendly, and user friendly. Interesting!

Designing will continue to evolve and so will SEO, but they have to go hand in hand in order to provide the best to the end users. In summary, website designing has evolved into a creative science, creating website’s that are user friendly, good looking, and SEO friendly too!

For more on SEO and Website design, you can also check out this article on SEO and best practices for Website Designing that I wrote some time back.

Well, you could argue and say, hey I have a website that has unique content, it downloads fast, and I update it often. The content is very useful for visitors.

So why exactly do I need to optimize it? I am offering valuable advice and content, all for free; shouldn’t the search engines give it priority naturally? After all my web site is providing value to the target audience?

I would say yes, it is true you are keeping your commitment of providing a valuable service to your potential customers but…

There are millions and millions of websites out there; exactly with the same objective, who do you think the search engines will prefer?

Think about it. You have created an amazingly beautiful and valuable creation but no one knows how to get there. You will need a little bit of help from everybody to find this creation of yours. You need to help people and search engines to help you.

Just like there are landmarks that tell you which way you are headed, or street signs that tell you that up ahead there is a restaurant etc , you need to find a way to communicate to people and search engines that your web site exists and that it is one gem of a web site! Search engine optimizing your web site does that for you.

Little things like providing an appropriate title to each of your web page, and meta tags…these elements are small but they have an incremental effect on your website’s visibility.

You will need to couple your SEO efforts with What we call in the tradition marketing, word of mouth. It helps tremendously to shout out, tell your friends to check out your web site, request then to refer it. Social networking optimization is another way of providing your web site the required push. Include your URL everywhere, signature lines, your Facebook profiles, LinkedIn, twitter updates…

Search engines have their own algorithms; they have tools that tell them what is being searched and which sites are more popular.

And this is just the beginning.

The Title of a page or the title tag should reveal what a page contains in the smallest possible sentence (up to 70 charcaters) It can go up to more than that but the sentence might get truncated.The Title of a page has the maximum impact when said in an interesting way such that; it appeals to the searcher. The searcher should find it attractive enough to click and find out more.

The title should not mislead, it should be honest about the content. For instance, if it talks about boards games but  takes you to a page where there is no mention about board games, it might have your visitor exiting at a very fast rate, never to return again!

It is important that if expectations are made; they are met.

It would also be helpful if the title contains at least one or more key terms associated with your line of business.

A couple of examples of simple yet effective title tags might be : -

If you type in “search engine” in Google; some of the first page results are -

1. Title : Dogpile Web Search
Description: All the best search engines piled into one. All the best search engines piled into one. Web · Images · Video · News · Yellow Pages · White Pages …
www.dogpile.com/

2. Title : Internet Search Engines – Search Engine Guide Blog
If you are looking for any type of search engine you will find it here. All search engines have been categorized by topic. Thousands listed.
www.searchengineguide.com/searchengines.html – Cached – Similar

It really helps to make a few drafts of the title before finalizing the title header of the page. Testing out the right combination of key words and the flow of the title such that it is attractive to your potential visitors, is sometimes quite a challenge. It is indeed an art.