Search Engine Optimisation

Thursday 21 March 2013

Offer quality and up-to-date content

So this will be my last post, but, if there is any demand for more posts, or an even greater depth of explanation to any previous posts, I will surely respond. As a last post, I felt this topic was fitting. So, here we go.

Keep your site relevant and up-to-date.

Interesting and contemporary content increases recognition.

If your site is interesting and contains content users will find useful, then these factors will influence your site traffic more than any other factors. People recognise good content when they see it and usually word gets around by word-of-mouth, leading to greater volumes of site traffic. Other kinds of ways people direct others to sites would be social media,as social media plays a huge part within today's society. So keeping your content appealing is a key way to attract users. Another thing is to stay with the times and keep your sites content modern, which will appeal to people of the current generation. This will interlink with keeping your content interesting.

Recognise differences, in certain users' understanding of your content

Think about words different users will use to find the same thing on your site. There is always differing knowledge among users on certain topics. A user with a greater knowledge of a topic will use a specific word to find what they need, whereas a user with a lesser knowledge of the topic,will use more vague words while looking for the same thing. An example, will better demonstrate my point.

Say, two different users, with differing knowledge about car suspensions, are searching for new suspension for a BMW M3.
User 1, the one with greater knowledge, their search might look something like thins:

Whereas,User 2, with less knowledge of car suspension, their search will be more vague:

Anticipating these different kinds of searches and accounting for them while writing your content, could be the difference in gaining a lot more traffic, only having positive results. Last point on this topic before I wrap up. Consider creating a new, useful service or product that no other sire offers. When Netflix was released, it wasn't the only site with free streaming, but it had something different for people. It offered streaming as a cheap alternative to renting and also as a legal alternative to torrents. This was the main selling point, so it doesn't always have to be new, but different and useful.

Anyway, that's all from me for now. If anyone has comments or questions feel free to use the comments section below, or my college email c.gorman8@nuigalway.ie.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
- Conor.

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Making your site easier to navigate

Simple navigation is key.

Navigation is important for users and search engines.

[Optimum navigation example layout]

Making the navigation of a website as simple as possible, can be very important, in helping users effectively finding the content they want. Another key aspect of this is helping search engines understand what you think is important and what each page's role is within the bigger picture of your website. Another good idea is to plan out the navigation of your homepage, using your homepage as an anchor. All site have a home page, which is generally the main page, and the most visited. This usually makes the homepage the starting place of navigation, like the center of the spiders web. Depending on the size of your site, navigation can take several forms and thinking of how users will get from one page, to another page is a good idea. If you have a large enough site, thinking about splitting your different product/services into multiple category and subcategory pages would be a good way to go. Alternatively if you have fewer pages perhaps making different pages which become more specific the deeper you go is a good idea. (For example, main page -> toyota cars -> toyota corolla cars.)

Use "breadcrumb lists"

A breadcrumb list id a row of links which are at the top of the page, allowing users navigate back to previous pages more easily. Usually these breadcrumbs navigate from left to right, having the home page first and the current page last. These also help users know where they are in relation to the home page, helping them quote the pages and get to it easier next time needed. Below is an example of what "breadcrumbs look like, the blue text indicating how the earlier pages are internal links to earlier pages. Simple but effective.

Alan's Used Autos>Cars> Volkswagen >Golf>2001

Additional tips to better site navigation:

Make the navigation from general content to more specific content as flowing and simple as possible. The easier and simpler it is the better users will enjoy using your site.
Try making navigation mostly text links. What I mean is, instead of having drop down lists or animations, use simple text that can help users and search engines alike know what they are navigating to before they do.
Avoid making your navigation too complex. For instance, linking each page to every other page on your site is unnecessary and complicates things. Also, don't make navigation too lengthy by needing 20 clicks to get to a less specific content page. This just deters users from using your site.

Thanks again for reading guys, more to come tomorrow.

- Conor.

Tuesday 19 March 2013

Improving your site's URL structure

Like my title explains, today's post is all about improving the URL structure of your site. The main idea behind doing this, is to make it easier for the search engine "crawlers" to search your site and index the information. It also makes a lot more sense, to make it easier for the site user to navigate your site. So....

With URL's keep it simple.

Make your URL's easy to understand.

By making your site URL's easy to understand, you effectively do three things at once.
First of all, you help yourself keep your site better organised and make it easier to understand where a certain page is and also what the page will contain. Secondly, just as you are helping yourself navigate your own site, you make it easier for users to know where they are within your website. This avoids users from being confused by long cryptic URL's that contain a lot of unrecognisable letters or numbers. If users wanted to link your site to another person, it would be easier for them to remember a relevant word than a lot of nonsensical letters and numbers.

Lastly and, in regards to getting your site high in a search results, most importantly is that having your URL's easy to understand and descriptive, it helps search engine "crawlers" navigate your site, which in turn gives them more vital information regarding each page. So it really is in your best interest to have your URL's simple and descriptive.

http://www.alansusedautos.com/folder3/09666a/x3/00012m.htm

The example above shows how not to structure your URL[red highlighted area]. This would make it hard for people and search engines to navigate, only causing problems for yourself. You'd be best suited to structure it like the one below.

http://www.alansusedautos.com/toyota/corolla/spare_parts/front_lights.htm

Remember that URL's are displayed in the search results too.

Just like the topics I discussed in my last two posts, URL's are displayed in a users search results, the same way the title and snippet are. i.e. the <title> tag and <meta> tags.
Spending a bit of time making your URL's user friendly will yield great results. If you keep them simple but effective, whatever a user is searching for, a helpful URL will always be of great benefit to you both. There is a very helpful page created by Google Webmasters which I would recommend reading to help better understand the best ways to structure your sites URL's.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76329.

Additional tips to better URL's.

Use words in URL's but avoid making them too lengthy.
Create a simple site directory, making it simple for users to know where they are within your site.
This may sound silly, but have only one URL per page to avoid confusion between users. The best way to fix this if you have more than one URL for a page is a "301 redirect". This in essence redirects users from un-used URL's to the preferred URL. More information on which can be found here. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633.

Thanks again for reading and I'm back tomorrow for a post on Site Navigation.
-Conor.

Monday 18 March 2013

Advantages of descriptive meta tags

So in this blog post, I plan to discuss how you can use Meta Tags to your advantage and also how to improve the structure of your sites URL.So...

Making use of meta tags.

How meta tags work:
Descriptive meta tags give Search Engines a short summary of what a webpage is about. Kind of like a page's title does, only a title may be a few words and a meta tag can be a sentence to a short paragraph. There is a SEO web tool called "Google Webmaster Tools" which provides a handy content analysis section that will tell you about any description meta tags that are either too short, long, or duplicated too many times. (This is a free-to-use service, but you will need a Google account. Check here for more details. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Webmaster_Tools.) Just like the title tag, the meta tag is within the <head> tag of your HTML. Below is an example showing the HTML document where the green highlighted area is the description meta tag. It's a snippet of what the page is about.

<html>

<head>

<title>Alan's Used Autos - Buy Used Cars, Spare Parts and Auto Services At Great Prices</title>

</head>

<body>

Advantages of description meta tags:
Description meta tags are important because Search Engines might use them as snippets for your pages. I said "might" because the search engine may use a relevant section of your page's visible text if it's similar to a users search query. Adding description meta tags to each page is good practice in case the search engine cannot find a good part of your text to use in the snippet. Words in the snippet are in bold if they match a users search query. This lets the user get a better idea of what the content of a particular page is, and if it is relevant to what they are looking for. Below is an example of a meta tag matching up to a users search. (User searched "Vintage Used Cars")

Alan's Used Autos - Buy Used Cars, Spare Parts and Auto Services At Great Prices

Alan's Used Autos provides a great selection of used autos spare parts and auto services to everyone from the beginner to the well rounded driver looking for a speedy service and a great price. We stock new and vintage models for the collector within us all.
www.alansusedautos.com/

Additional tips to help improve your meta tags:

Try your best to inform and interest the user when they read your description meta tag.
To help users and search engines navigate your site and understand each page, having unique meta tags for each page is best practice. Of course if your site is really large and has thousands of pages, this just isn't feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on each page's content.
Avoid using tags of no relevance to your page, tags that only contains keywords and of course a single meta tag across your entire sites pages.

New post tomorrow re: URL structures.

Thanks for reading.
-Conor.

Monday 11 March 2013

Intro to SEO and Using Page Titles

Firstly, what is SEO? (Search Engine Optimisation)

"Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or web-page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users." Courtesy of Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization. The idea behind this blog, is to help in any way, people who are looking to enhance their websites search engine ranking. It is aimed at anybody who has a website,because SEO can be applied to any website to try increase the volume of site traffic.

Throughout these future blog posts I felt an example would help my explanations, so I have created a fake website which I can refer back to, to make some of my points more clear.
The website details are below:

Website/business name: "Alan's Used Autos"
Domain name: alansusedautos.com
Focus: Website for a business selling used automobiles, spare parts and performing auto servicing at great prices.
Size: Small, ~175 pages

Also, one more point before I get started. Search engine optimization affects only organic search results, not paid or "sponsored" results. With that sorted, lets begin.

Create unique page titles.

A title tag indicates the website page title

A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a web page is. Within the HTML document, the <title> tag should be placed within the <head> tag like in my example below. You should create a unique title for every different page on your site so user's and search engines know which page is which.

Referring back to my example, the optimum solution would look like this in the HTML document:
N.B.[single line indicates beginning of an example, double line indicates the end of an example.]

<html>

<head>

<title>Alan's Used Autos - Buy Used Cars, Spare Parts and Auto Services At Great Prices</title>

</head>

<body>

(Line in green represents the title of the homepage, which contains the business name and 3 main focuses.)

Page titles are displayed in search results.

If your website appears in a search result, the title tags contents will usually appear in the first line of the results. If a user's search query is similar to your page title, words within your title will be in bold. This can help users recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to their search. Using our example I can clarify this.

Alan's Used Autos - Buy Used Cars, Spare Parts and Auto Services At Great Prices

Alan's Used Autos provides a great selection of used automobiles, spare parts and auto services to everyone from the beginner to the well rounded driver looking for a speedy service and a great price.
www.alansusedautos.com/

(A user performs the search [used autos]. Our homepage shows up as a result, with the title listed on the first line (notice that the terms the user searched for appear in bold).)

The title for your homepage can contain the name of your website/business and you can also include other relevant information like the where your business is located or maybe some of the services you can offer to customers, like below.

Alan's Used Autos - Buy Used Cars, Spare Parts and Auto Services At Great Prices

We stock spare parts for each model of Honda manufactured autos, from the popular Civic to the beastly Skyline. All your needs at cheap prices, with the best service on the west coast.

www.alansusedautos.com/parts/honda/civic

(A user performs the search [cheap spare honda civic parts]. A relevant page (its
title is unique to the content of the page) on our site appears as a result.)

Additional tips to help improve your title page:

Try and best describe with accuracy the page's content and avoid choosing a title that has nothing to do with the content on the page.
Create unique title tags for each page. Each of your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which lets the search engine know the page is distinct from the others on your site. Also, avoid using a single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages.
Use brief, but descriptive titles and avoid using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users.

The next topic, will be in regard to using meta tags to your advantage. Thanks for reading.
-Conor.