SEO Best Practices

To effectively create a Search Engine Optimized website or blog follow the best practices, techniques and tools below. The information describes and summarizes effective SEO techniques learned in web marketing class and from research on how to create a search engine optimized website. For more SEO and SEM resources visit the Findability Resources page and look under the ‘SEO’ and ‘Search’ categories.

The following best practices will help increase your organic search engine rankings and ultimately make your website findable.

Web Standards and Accessibility HTML semantic markup that follows web standards guarantees code that search bots will easily recognize. Valuable clues in the code become available for the search bots to easily understand what is contained in the content. Search bots go through a web page systematically reviewing the semantic markup. Use of h1, h2, and h3 header tags to detail the importance of certain content on the page will immediately tell the search engines the descriptions of the major content.
Accessible code also has a positive effect on creating findable content and a findable website. Code that is developed to be accessible to all users, including those who are blind or do not have certain online capabilities, will be accessible to search bots that search through the code without seeing the design or the intended visual flow. Techniques for creating accessible code include:
a. ‘alt’ tags that detail information about imagery and provides alternate content for those who cannot see images,
b. external CSS files and JavaScript files that separate the information and presentation files that make up a website page and other progressive enhancement techniques,
c. ‘title’ tags inside ‘href’ links that provide content for those who cannot read the links.

Low code to content ratio For search engines and those looking for information on the web, content is king. The key to creating valuable content for all users, is building a web page that has a low code to content ratio, meaning the code should be pared down so the search robots will not stumble over code to get to the keyword-rich content. Minimize the amount of flash and other animation code that appears among the content. Search engines do not read content in flash, a detriment to making a findable website.

Keyword-rich Content that is unique and useful to your users contains a combination of obvious and typical keywords that your users would normally search and niche keywords and phrases that are more specific to your more unique content that specific target users would search. Utilizing this long-tail theory technique will ensure a good range of keywords to increase your search engine rankings. ‘Keyword-rich’ content contains many words that users would search in engines to find your content. This content should not be stuffed with keywords, but comprise 7% of your total content on the page. It also should read naturally and have relevance to your website so the search bots understand the quality of the content.

Text links with targeted keywords help search bots navigate through your website and recognize relevant keywords. Search bots follow the links through your site, so the more links you have, internal and external, the more optimized your website for search engines.

Meta Descriptions, meta keywords, page titles, and clean URLs that contain keywords referencing your website content. Meta Descriptions and Meta Keywords are tags placed in the head of the HTML code that provides a description of the content on the web page. These descriptions, the page titles, and URLs should all contain similar keywords to strengthen the relevance of the web page for the search robots. Each page should have a unique and clear page title and description so the search robots view distinct, relevant, and quality content. The page URLs should be free of query code with characters and random assortment of numbers to safeguard information and to create clean and appropriate links to each page.

XML sitemap and robots.txt Search bots peruse websites through links and index based on the quality of content and links. The first file that search bots reach is the robots.txt file, if it is provided in the website files. Taking advantage of robots.txt, you should put the link to your website sitemap in this file so that the robots are directed to the XML sitemap that contains the links to each page of your website. Once the search bots run through your sitemap, they will be connected to each page of your website, increasing the indexing process.

Custom 404 error page Building a custom 404 error page allows you to provide a page that can direct your lost users back into your website despite frustrations. Although users might be confused about why they did not reach their intended destination, you can assure them and give them additional ways to find the information on your website. It is best to include a search option, a link to the home page, and possible links that might have been what the user intended to find.

Google Analytics to help determine the effectiveness of your SEO and to gain knowledge about how your users are finding, navigating, and spending time on your site, as well as how you can improve your website based on these findings. Testing and refining your website is crucial to optimization. Your efforts to create a findable and search engine optimized website is never finished, and therefore it is important to test, re-test, and continue optimizing.

Resources:
P.J. Fusco ‘SEO Best Practices: 20 Questions’ on Cliz.com
‘9 Ways To Improve the SEO of Every Website You Design’ Six Revisions by Alex Cleanthous