On-Site SEO

Developing and Maintaining a Search Engine Friendly Website

by Jacob Ward

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of optimising a webpage or website to appear higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for

specific search terms.

What is On-Site SEO?

The optimisation of on-site or on-page factors in an attempt to help Google more easily crawl and identify the content of your website to have it rank

for your chosen keywords.

Domain Name

First opportunity to let Google know what your site is about.

http://www.samsbikes.com

http://www.birminghambicycles.com

WWW vs. Non-WWW

http://www.birminghambicycles.com

and

http://birminghambicycles.com

are two different websites.

URL Structure and File Naming

Example of a badly structured URL:http://www.birminghambicycles.com/display.php?cat=2&man=5&prod=174

Example of a well structured URL:http://www.birminghambicycles.com/mountain-bikes/kona/cinder-cone.php

Content Accessible from Multiple URLs

Having the same content accessible from multiple URLs can cause duplicate content issues

http://www.birminghambicycles.com/display.php?cat=2&man=5&prod=174

http://www.birminghambicycles.com/mountain-bikes/kona/cinder-cone.php

http://www.birminghambicycles.com/mens-bikes/off-road/cinder-cone.php

Meta Tags

There are many meta tags available, the two main ones to be aware of are:

Meta Tags

There are many meta tags available, the two main ones to be aware of are:

Description

<meta name=”description” content=”Description of page content” />

Used for giving a description of the page's content.

Meta Tags

There are many meta tags available, the two main ones to be aware of are:

Robots

<meta name=”robots” content=”instructions, for, robots” />

Used for giving a instructions to search engine bots.

index / noindex

follow / nofollow

Meta Tags

Keywords

<meta name=”keywords” content=”first keyword, second keyword, etc” />

Despite what many people think, 'Google does not use the keywords meta tag in our web search' (Cutts, 2011).

Useful for keeping track of keywords being targeted.

Title Tag

Title tag is used to determine the title of a page<title>Title of Page</title>

Keywords should be at the beginning

Good: <title>Keyword for Page – My Great Website</title>

Bad: <title>My Great Website</title>

Heading Tags

<h1>Primary Keyword</h1>

<h2>Second Level Keyword</h2><h3>Third Level Keyword</h3>

<h3>Third Level Keyword</h3>

<h2>Second Level Keyword</h2><h3>Third Level Keyword</h3>

<h3>Third Level Keyword</h3>

Images

Google cannot read the content of an image!

Tell Google what the picture is of using a relevant file name and a description of the image in the alt attribute.

<img src=”kona-cinder-cone.jpg” alt=”Kona Cinder Cone Bike Picture” />

Essential Pages

Contact Page

Privacy Policy

Terms of Use

Sitemap (sitemap.xml)

In Closing...

References

Cutts, M. (2009) “Google doesn't use the keywords meta tag in web search”, Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO, [Online].

Available at: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-search/ [Accessed 27 December 2011].

Dover, D., Dafforn, E. (2011) Search Engine Optimisation Secrets. John Wiley & Sons.

Enge, E., Spencer, S., Fishkin, R., Stricchiola, J. (2010) The Art of SEO. O'Reilly Media.

Fishkin, R. (2011) “SEO: The Free Beginner's Guide”, SEOmoz, [Online].

Available at: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo [Accessed 27 December 2011].

Vincent, L., Et al (2008) Recognizing text in images. U.S. Pat. 20080002893