Simple Tips for Creating a Search Engine Friendly Website or Blog

Are you struggling to get your site ranked in Google?

The truth is that many website owners/designers make very basic mistakes with their website that make it more difficult for search engines to find them, and to know what they are about.

Although SEO (search Engine Optimization) can get very involved, creating a search engine friendly site is very simple, and is usually all that most small business websites need to rank well in the search engines.

Basic Guidelines

1. All pages need to be focused on a particular theme/subject and a set of keywords related to that theme.

For example, if you have a page on your site about window frames (theme or subject) then you will need to choose appropriate keywords for that theme e.g. plastic window frames, wooden frames etc.

You should include information on that page about door frames.

2. All Pages must have a title which should contain the most important keywords and make sense when read.

Page titles are unique. You shouldn’t have another page with that same title on the site.

3. All Pages must have a description which contains the most important keywords and makes sense when read.

Page descriptions are unique. You shouldn’t have another page with that same description on the site.

4. If you use the keywords meta tag then Keywords should be limited to about 10 keywords/ keyword phrases and avoid repeating the same keyword more than 3 times.

Note: See editing Meta tags below

5. Page content should be written for the user and not the search engines. You should use headline tags especially the main headline tag on the page. Use lots of white space, bullets, sub heads to make the text easy to read and follow.

6. Page names should describe the content of the page. A page about window frames would have name like window-frames.html See web page names.

7. Create at least one link to each page on the site. Large sites use a sitemap for this purpose. Small sites (<10 pages don’t need one)

8. Create descriptive links.i.e a link to a page on plastic window frames should contain the phrase plastic window frames in the anchor text.

Note: anchor text is the text that contains the link.

9. Create descriptive links for site navigation and use text navigation not images.

10. Use the alt tag on images.

11. Local business websites should include/mention local areas and towns on web pages to optimise for local search.

Mistakes to Avoid

1.Writing content for search engines and not the end user

2. Trying to deceive the search engines

3 Repetitive use of keywords that is effectively keyword spam

4. Not linking to a page.

5. Not reading and following the Google webmaster guidelines

Resources and references:

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