Top 5 basic SEO tips
Here are my top 5 basic SEO tips to help your website perform better in the search engines and to help you improve on your current high position in the search results.
1) Content
2) Links – deep links
3) Domain names and file names
4) Tags – Meta, H1, Alt
5) Tracking – Webmaster tools and analytics
1) Content
Everyone should know by now that good quality content is essential to gain a high position in the search results. Ideally all content should be unique; not stuffed with keywords; and written for the user and not the search engine.
An easy way to find out if your content is unique is to do a search in Google using some of your content. If you put the search in inverted commas (“your content”) Google will return the websites it has indexed with the same content.
As for keyword stuffing there are plenty of tools out there that will show you the percentage of keywords on your page, you should aim for no more than 8%.
2) Links
Link building is still one of the most important aspects of SEO, as the number of backlinks you have is an indication of the popularity or importance of your website.
It’s important to remember that the best backlinks will be from sites that have relevant information about what your site is about, the more relevant the better as Google rates this very highly.
For example, there’s not much point in linking to a site about a local football team from a hair and beauty site. In an ideal world the links you get will be from similar or complementary sites. When looking for backlinks, searching for sites that appear for keywords you want is a good starting point.
But where should the backlinks point to? The answer is the most relevant pages on your site; you should put as much focus on deep-linking to good quality pages within your site as you do on your homepage links.
3) Domain names and file names
There’s lots of scope for SEO around URLs. Google guidelines suggest that you build a brand, but nevertheless keyword rich domains do well in search for the keywords in the domain name… if the SEO is done right.
As for file names they should be based around the top level keywords for that page, there’s no reason to give pages or files random names. If a page is based around keyword content, then the filename should contain that keyword.
For example, a page that has content about blue widgets should use the file name: ../blue-widgets.htm. This is one way of telling the search engine that this page is about blue widgets. One point I will make here is you should try to use hyphens in filenames; it’s well documented that this is best practice.
4) Tags – Meta, H1, Alt
There are certain tags you should be using to full effect as part of your on-page SEO; these include META tags (Title, Description and Keywords), the H1, H2 and H3 tags and Image Alt tags.
META Tags (Title, Description and Keywords)
Title tag should be descriptive, and contain your most important keyword/keyword phrase for that page/content (max 80 characters).
Description tag allows you to control the depiction of your page as some search engines use this text below your title in the search results. The text used should be persuasive and to-the-point to attract users, but also contain keywords relevant to page content (between 150 and 200 characters).
Keywords tag as the name suggests, this tag should contain keywords and keyword phrases relevant to the page content. But try not to include the same word more than 7 times as this can be seen as spammy (max 20 keywords/phrases).
H1, H2, H3 tags
Unlike META tags, these sit in the main body of content on your site and function as level headings for documents, with H1 being the top level, working down to H6 as the lowest level heading or sub heading for content.
So how do you use the H tag? In terms of SEO generally we would recommend that the title of the page is replicated in the H1 tag, then use variations or extended longtail search keywords in the rest of the H tags you use on your page. Normally we only use H1, H2 and H3.
Alt text
As highlighted in a previous post Image alt text in search engine optimisation Alt text is an important tag for image search, but can also provide on-page SEO content delivering useful information to search engines.
5) Tracking
Tracking and stats should form a big part of your SEO as you need to know who is backlinking to you; where traffic is coming from; what keywords people are using; and most importantly your conversion rate.
Google has some great free software; web-based Google Analytics gives you great tracking and stats information you can plug into your current Adwords PPC account.
Also an absolute must is Google Webmaster Tools, which allows you to make your site more Google-friendly; upload sitemaps; get Google’s view of your site; and find out about any potential problems.
To conclude, there are many things that influence SEO, but if you get the basics right you have a much greater chance of achieving a high position in the search results. But always keep in mind you should try to produce a website aimed at users, which gives the best user experience, rather than just attempt to influence search engines and their spiders. This approach always delivers the best results.
Google and the mystery of international SEO
This week in the Coast Digital office, over a myriad of cups of industrial strength coffee, we've been discussing and dissecting an increasingly common SEO scenario - how best to manage an online presence across multiple top level domains.
In this article, I'll try to uncover some truths and dispel some of the myths associated with obtaining SEO results, not only in the SERPS on Google.com, but for country-specific search too.
The problem
Take brand XYZ (fictional, for arguments sake – so don’t go searching), who have a website at XYZ.com, it's ranking nicely in Google for their pre-determined keywords, and has done so for quite some time. Business is booming, and XYZ have decided to branch out into the foreign – yet still Anglophone – market of New Zealand. To this end they have registered the domain XYZ.co.nz.
Our big question now rears its ugly head. How do XYZ ensure maximum SEO for their extra domain? And now that they are an international player how do they continue to appear to the widest, most relevant audience possible?
There are a number of technical points to bear in mind to continue getting the best from SEO at an international level. With these in place it’s possible to ensure a high profile in search across any number of new, international domains.
1. Server level redirects
It is possible to redirect one page to another using a 301 or 302 server redirect. A 301 will tell the search engines that a page has moved permanently. Many hosts provide a URL forwarding system which uses a 302 redirect - this tells search engines that the page has temporarily moved.
But some search engines struggle to cope with this redirection and go on to spread popularity between the old and new sites, rather than just indexing the new one. The 301 is the more favourable of the two from an SEO point of view, however, a redirect alone won’t guarantee a listing for the New Zealand domain XYZ.co.nz in local search.
2. Hosting location
For the best results from SEO for a new international domain, a widely-recognised approach is to choose a hosting solution located in the country you are targeting, in our hypothetical example, XYX.co.nz in New Zealand.
Google uses IP data to determine the geographic location of servers hosting all the websites it indexes. This means that it is possible to plan ahead, arrange hosting in the desired locale and reap the benefits.
But it is important to be aware that some hosts have offices in one country and hosting equipment and servers in another. This pitfall makes it easy to be misled, so it's wise to check before you sign up for a particular hosting solution.
Another important factor to remember is that the geographic location of the DNS record appears to carry a greater weighting then the actual location of the content host.
3. Link neighbourhood
Possibly the most crucial factor in getting listed in Google’s country-specific search results is developing a strong set of region-specific inbound links.
The number of these inbound links to the site will have a significant effect on the results in Google. In our example, a handful of inbound links from authoritative sites in New Zealand would have the effect of introducing the domain into the local search results pages.
Location-specific business directories are a very effective source for obtaining this type of link.
4. Duplicate or unique content
The debate around Google’s requirement for unique content to achieve good SERPs positions continues. In the case of brand XYZ there are many content options to consider – I’ll run through a few of the choices available:
- Duplicate the home page from the .com site to the .co.nz, and refer ‘internal’ links to the .com site.
- Duplicate the home page and any significant pages containing keywords from the .com to the .co.nz, and refer remaining internal links to the .com site.
- Duplicate the whole site from the .com domain, so that it is mirrored on both servers.
Rewrite content on the home page to make it unique to the locale in question, and redirect remaining links to the .com domain. - Rewrite content on the home page and any significant pages containing keywords from the .com and refer remaining internal links to the .com site.
- Rewrite the entire site content to make it unique to the locale in question. Include local specific meta data, page titles, addresses, telephone numbers, spelling and colloquialisms.
- Use the ‘NoFollow’ attribute on links to the .com site from the .co.nz site for any one of the aforementioned solutions.
Obviously there are a lot of possibilities – although not all of them are best practice. Ideally we would suggest rewriting the whole of a site's contents to target the specific locale, however, this is not a realistic option if we are talking about 2000+ pages of content.
One useful trick is to set the footer template to contain the address of (in the case of our example) the New Zealand office, which will display on every page. Essentially, the 'duplicate content penalty' isn't going to be too horrific where a website is duplicated in part on a different top level domain – essentially duplication on this level is quite a natural phenomenon, and should be handled with ease by Google.
5. Webmaster tools
It is possible to clarify any intentions by managing both domains in the same Google Webmaster Tools account, and using the tools available to specify each website's country targeting.
This relatively recent addition to the toolset provides the most straightforward method of informing Google of this scenario. The use of this feature, combined with careful hosting choices, localised inbound link acquisitions and unique content, should result in maximum visibility for the brand, locally and internationally.
The opinions expressed herein are the personal opinion of the author and are not intended as statements of fact and do not represent the view of Coastdigital Limited in any way
