At the moment, the Internet seems to be going crazy for Search Engine Optimisation (known as SEO).
SEO is the current buzz acronym, like XML was way back in 2003. My clients want it, my friends want it. I want it. And the best part SEO doesn’t cost a lot to do. It just requires some time investment, once every month or so to keep you at the top of the rankings.
Not everyone can be number one on every search on Google, and anyone who promises that they can make you number 1 within X days is lieing. Google’s search algorithms change frequently, possibly every day, and nobody knows exactly how Google works. But, looking at current top ranking search results, we can get a rough idea.
Before we start, let’s get one thing clear: no one SEO technique can give you the ultimate rankings boost. You need to play with many, and every so often add some new ones, remove some old ones. Keeping your site, and especially your SEO techniques fresh is often half the battle.
A URL counts for a lot
A URL with your desired keyword in counts for a lot when Google is indexing pages. You can add all the other SEO techniques that have ever existed in the World to your website, but if your Britney Spears fansite is hosted at http://www.geocities.com/spacemountain/mysite/90881.html chances are it’s never going to rank higher than www.britneyspears.com, and one could argue that it never should. Google is designed in such a way that official websites should be among the highest ranking. If, however, you happen to be Britney Spears and you have your website on Geocities, then you have a problem. So for professionals, sometimes paying a premium for your official domain is more than worth it. Of course, if this is just a personal blog, it’s probably cheaper just to think of a new name for the blog.
The title of your page
And by title, we’re referring to the title that appears in the Windows title bar and is within the <title> tags on your page. As someone creating a web page you may often discard the title that appears in the browser bar - after all it’s so disconnected from the rest of your content - but Google doesn’t. Currently, the data contained within title is very important on Google rankings.
Gamespot aim to be one of the top search results for computer and video games in a Google search, and one of the ways they acheive this goal is by repeating key words in the title. For example, at the time of writing the title for the Gears of War 2 page on Gamespot reads: “Gears of War 2 for Xbox 360 - Gears of War 2 Xbox360 Game - Gears of War 2 Xbox 360 Video Game”. Notice the change in spelling for Xbox360 in the second repetition, and also notice how the phrase is different each time to suggest that the site is not just repeating key words.
IGN, another games website, take a slightly different approach to their title tags focussing on the additional search parameters that would be linked with the game. At the time of writing, the Gears of War 2 page reads “IGN: Gears of War 2 News, Previews, Features and More Articles”. This method gives IGN a better chance of being one of the top hits should someone type “Gears of War 2 preview” into Google. Once the game is released IGN’s title bar will update to include reviews, cheats and walkthroughs.
The language of your page
It sounds silly, but setting the language of your page can actually help increase your rankings in the countries specific to your target audience, and it doesn’t seem to affect your overall ranking. Add the following attributes to your HTML tag (adjusting the language to the actual language of the page):
xml:lang="en-GB" lang="en-GB"
If you have multiple language versions of your site, offer a <link> tag in your <head> section to the other language, and the search engine will index the correct page for the correct audience accordingly. For example:
<LINK rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="frenchversion.html" hreflang="fr" lang="fr" title="Mon blog">
The META tags
There’s two META tags which search engines pay attention to when ranking your site, keywords and description. These two tags seem to once again be in favour at Google, although only a few years ago it was rumoured that Google didn’t take them into account at all.
For META keywords, add the following tag to the <head> section of your page:
<meta name="keywords" content="comma, seperated, keywords" />
As a comma seperated list, your keywords should be consistent with your website’s content, and what is written in your title bar. It is often a good idea to start with the website name, before adding 4 or 5 keywords which describe a common theme on your site, and then a few more keywords describing the page itself. Try not to go overboard with keywords. Too many, and search engines may just ignore the lot.
For META description, add the following tag to the <head> section of your page:
<meta name="description" content="This should be a description" />
A successful high ranking on Google via META description seems to be based on two things.
- Your description should basically contain the site name, and then a paragraph which summarises the title of the page, and the keywords. For example, if my site were called ‘Hollywood Stars’ and I had a page about ‘Bruce Willis’ with the keywords ‘news, movies, action, Die Hard, 16 Blocks”; my description would probably read: “Bruce Willis on Hollyword Stars. The number one resource for news, gossip and photos on Bruce Willis, star of action movie Die Hard and 16 Blocks.”
- Your description should change frequently. Google seems to like websites where the description changes once a month, so try and change the descriptions around a bit every so often.
And so concludes part 1 of our Search Engine Optimisation guide. Be sure to check back for part 2 soon!
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