Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process of optimizing your website so that it will rank higher in natural (organic) search results. When someone types in a phrase that relates to your service or product, you want your website to appear (rank) as high on the first page of the search results as possible.

Search engines have a set of rules they use to determine the relevance of your content with regard to a search phrase. Google evaluates over 200 factors in this process. This set of rules (or algorithms) isn’t published and is subject to constant tweaking. Ultimately, there are thousands of details involved in optimizing a site. Only someone who does this on a daily basis is able to recognize and take advantage of the myriad details that can increase a site’s ranking.

It also easy to think that “if a little is good, a lot is better.” In reality, however, it is possible to over-optimize a site. Thousands of website owners had an unpleasant surprise in 2003 when Google launched what is now known as The Florida Update. At that time, Google modified its rules to weed out websites that had been over-optimized to manipulate their rankings; the result was a large number of websites being relegated to obscurity.

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Things That Affect Search Engine Rank Include:

The Domain Name / URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

Search engines place a high value on the words in the domain name. Having a domain name like http://www.huntsville-bike-parts.com is far more likely to be found by someone looking for “Bike Parts in Huntsville” than http://bobsbikes.com.

Note: If you are in the process of purchasing a domain name, it is recommended that you register both the dashed and non-dashed version to protect your website, because you don’t want someone with a spam site using the dashed or non-dashed version of your URL. Furthermore, it is recommended that you register every variation of your domain name and make sure that they all resolve to the same website (for example: huntsville-bike-parts.com, huntsvillebikeparts.com, huntsville-bike-parts.net, and huntsvillebikeparts.net). In some cases, you may even wish to consider registering misspelled versions of your domain name.

The Navigational Structure

You want the path to any document to support the searchers’ queries. If you are in Huntsville selling high-performance bicycle parts, you should consider paths like http://www.huntsville-bike-parts.com/lightweight-road-wheels/. The default page in this section would typically be an index of all the racing wheels you carried and might be further subdivided by brand http://www.huntsville-bike-parts.com/lightweight-road-wheels/campagnolo/. The objective is to understand what people are searching for the most and to build pages with paths that “support” the most popular search phrases.

The Page Name

The most important page on your website is the default page that is found when someone just types in your URL. Usually this page will have a name like index.html, but it may have another name or a different extension. The search engines will use this page to categorize your site and determine its relevancy. This page should be rich in text content and navigational links. If you want the search engines to figure out what your site is about, it is important that the page not be filled with flash images or use pictures for navigation. Note: Dashes are seen as spaces by search engines and are more effective than underscores in page names.

The Page Title

The “title” of the page is at least as important as the page name itself. People used to be very keen on putting the company name in the title, followed by actual title of the page, such as “Bob’s Bike Shop – Road Wheels”.  This was a good approach especially if someone bookmarked the page, because the bookmark would read: ”Bob’s Bike Shop”.

However, this approch doesn’t yield the best results with search engine algorithms. Page titles should reflect the search terms you would expect to see from someone looking for the information contained on that page. Each page title should be unique. The title for the page in the previous wheel example might be: ”Lightweight Campagnolo Racing Wheels “.  Again, the objective is to understand what people are searching on the most and to build titles that “support” the most popular search phrases in the order they would most likely appear.

The Page Content

Content is extremely important as it hopefully contains what the searcher is actually trying to find. The body of the page should contain the search phrase and variations on it. In the bicycle parts example, you might try to create compelling copy that contains the phrases “wheels for bicycles”, “bike wheels”, “lightweight wheels”, “road wheels”, “racing wheels for road bikes”, and so forth. Search engines also pay more attention to tagged text. The H1 tag is believed to have the highest importance, but bolded text and linked text all come into play and should support key search phrases. 

In Summary

The following provides a brief checklist with regards to the points you should keep in mind when creating a website:

• Organize Your Content: Display whatever you are selling by category and cross-link to categories that are likely to be used in search (terms such as location, country of origin, brand, etc.).
• Promote / Emphasize Your Site’s Organization: Use folders to support relevant categories; use page titles that reflect the terms people will search for; and use page names and paths that support the title / content of that page. Ensure that all of these aspects of the organization are communicated clearly in your navigation and breadcrumbs. 
• Optimize Your Page Descriptions: Create meta-descriptions that contain key phrases from the page and entice the reader to click to discover more.
• Tune Your Copy: Each page should be viewed as a potential entry point for your site. Be sure that each page’s copy commences by explaining the topic in brief so searchers can QUICKLY determine if they have come to the right place. Then expand to explain the topic in more detail with relevant links to related items of interest.
• Fatten Your Content: Reuse key phrases (and use variations on key phrases) to capture as many searches as possible without going so far as to negatively affect the reader. 
• Incoming Links Strategy: Search engines will give “credit” to your site based on the number of other sites that link to you, especially sites that are classed as being authoritative. One approach is to register with business directories and use these domain names to have relevant anchor text pointing back to your site.