SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part I
By Joe on Tuesday, February 20 2007, 12:56 - Technical info - Permalink
Search Engine Optimisation on SiteMaker is much like Search Engine Optimisation with any website. The key is to make sure that your site contents are focused and relevant to the keywords that you wish to rank highly on. This means making a real effort in a number of places to make sure the terms you use are consistent. And don't be too ambitious, you're never going to beat the big guys if your words are too general and competitive.
This series of articles is based on our experience and generally accepted guidelines on how to improve your rankings. It doesn't guarantee results, but will point you in the right direction ;-). If you want more specialist help, check out Hypersubmit, or read the huge range of SEO articles available online.
Ground rules!
Firstly nobody can guarantee you positions in the search rankings. Search engines keep their search algorithms very secret, and update them regularly to make sure they produce true and accurate results.
The second thing to know is that SEO takes real work. Your going to have to think about it, and make lots of changes to all the pages in your site. This will take time, and you may want to adjust things after a few months as you start to see your results. The Internet may be a great potential market, but you need to invest in marketing your site on it. SEO is a good way of doing it, but like everything it doesn't always come easy.
Next it's going to take time for your rankings to grow. Search engines can take months to even list your site, and then further time to assign you a rank. They will then review your site periodically and check for updates, but the frequency of this can vary. So don't expect too much too soon. Be patient, build your credibility and presence, and good things will come. Many sites that rank highly have been around a long long time.
And finally, SEO isn't everything. There's never an excuse for not marketing your site in other ways if you're serious about getting it noticed. Traditional offline marketing, online marketing (banners or adwords), putting it on letterheads, posting on industry specific directories/message boards, etc., can all help, and it will also support your SEO efforts too. So don't forget that too.
First things first
So now the ground rules are out of the way, here are the basics. If you are building a new site, you have two problems; getting your site listed, and improving the rankings. Even getting your site listed is a subject full of controversy, but also closely relates to how to you get it optimised.
In terms of optimisation search engines looks for consistency and relevancy in a number of different areas of your in-page content and referral links. These include;
- Your URL (or address) of your page, e.g. www.joeslondontaxis.com, or www.joeslondontaxis.com/taxibooking, etc.
- Your Page title in the HTML, e.g. "London taxi company", or "London taxi bookings page"
- Your Keywords metadata in the HTML, e.g. "London taxis, London taxi, Joes taxis, West London taxi, etc."
- Your Description metadata in the HTML, e.g. "London taxi company provides taxi services..."
- Your page content, e.g. the text that is on your page
- Links on your page, including the anchor text, e.g. the text on which the link is set
- Images on your page, including the name of the image file, and the link (if any) set on the image
- Referral links to your pages, including the anchor text of the referral link, e.g. a link on another site referring to your site
Points 1-7 are easily within your control as they all relate to the contents of your site. Point 8 requires linking to your site from other external sites, which is less easy to achieve, though there are a number of ways in which you can go about doing this.
And remember, search engines are mechanical but not stupid! They are in a constant battle with link spammers who attempt to manipulate ranking results for profit. Optimising your pages and encouraging genuine link backs from other relevant sites will help, but getting involved in link spamming and other dodgy techniques can get your site black listed. So more isn't always best, make sure they're genuine.
This series of articles will go through each of these points in turn and discuss how they are relevant to SiteMaker and how to go about doing them.
Like I said, none of this is proven fact, but often based on perceived wisdom and what little guidance search engines give out. So we also want to encourage debate. If you know something useful or have found a good resource please let us know. Happy searching!
Next Article in Series: Sitemaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part II
Comments
Can't wait for the next blog on this subject. When is it (are they) due?
Should be a week or so. I started writing it as one article, but it soon became very very big, so thought we'd break it down a bit. When it's done we'll produce it as a PDF download for the product as its something lots of people ask about. Glad you like it.
When adding keywords to the site/page does it make a difference how you list them?
For example putting commas / full stops between each word, or on a new line etc.
Keywords should be words or phrases separated by a comma, e.g. "london taxi, west london taxi, hammersmith taxi", etc. 2 or 3 word Keyword phrases may be better (unless you keyword is qutie obscure) as they will be more specific and less competitive. There's more on this in the next article.
What fantastic advise FRED