Web Site Optimization - the basic things

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June 5th, 2005, 06:18 AM

dimos31

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Web Site Optimization - the basic things

Within the following lines I will try to give same general guidelines on how to make your website more search-engine friendly. These are common practices found to work but the whole thing is much more complicated since search engines constantly change the way they rank websites, so here you are:

Use of frames
Search Engines do not rank very well sites that use Frames. Things are so bad so I recommend that if your site uses frames the best thing to do is to redesign your site in order to avoid using frames.

If you have to use frames then the best thing that you can do is to edit your framed web site file and put a <noframes> tag.

Code example

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> Framed Site</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET cols="120,*">
<FRAME name="index" target="main">
<FRAME name="main">
<NOFRAMES>
Put here the code of a normal web files that describes your products and services
</NOFRAMES>
</FRAMESET>
</HTML>

The code between the <noframes> tag will not be visible to the visitors but will be used from search engines. Put there the code that is between the <body> tags of a web page that uses no frames.

Use of Dynamic URLs
If your web site uses URLs with something like that

http://www.mysite.com/view.asp?a=content
then you have a problem for some search engines that do not list dynamic URLs

If you use database and you use dynamic URLs then create a static URL page e.g.
http://www.mysite.com/view.htm and submit this file to the search engine.

Use of Flash
If your Site has only flash and no html code then you have a problem since search engines do not list flash. There is no problem if you just use flash for effects on some points of a page.

Some people use a flash intro in the index.htm file and nothing else on this file, this may cause your index file not to be listed properly.

Also flash links cannot be spidered from search engines

Use of Java Scripts
Search Engines cannot spider links that are in javascript. If you use javascripts for links then add somewhere in your website simple html links to other website files.

The Title Tag
The title tag of your page is the single most important factor to consider when optimizing your web page for the search engines. This is because most engines & directories place a high level of importance on keywords that are found in your title tag. The title tag is also what the search engines usually use for the title of your listing in the search results.

Example of Title Tag
<TITLE>Your Title Tag - learn to optimize your title tag</TITLE>

The correct placement for the title tag is between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags within the HTML that makes up your page.

Your title tag is good to be between 50-80 characters long - including spaces! The length that the different search engines accept varies, but as long as you keep within this limit you should be ok.

I recommend that you include 1-2 of your most important keyword phrases in the title tag, BUT be careful not to just list keywords. If you just list keywords you risk being viewed as a spamming the engines, which can ultimately lead to you being blacklisted by the search engines. Your title tag should include your keyword phrases while remaining as close to a readable sentence as possible to avoid any problems.
Make your title enticing! Don't forget that even if you get that #1 listing in the search engines your listing still needs to say something that makes the surfer want to clickthrough and visit your site.
Each page of your site should have it's own title tag with it's own keywords that related to the page that it appears on.
Thing that you have to avoid doing
There are several things, considered "spamming", that you can do to try to get your page listed higher on a search engine results page. Basically, you should never try to trick a search engine in any way, or you risk being blacklisted by them. Since the majority of your traffic will come from search engines the risk far outweighs the benefits in the long run.

So
Do not list keywords anywhere except in your keywords meta tag. By "list" we mean something like - keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, keyword 4, etc. While you may have a legitimate reason for doing this we would recommend avoiding it so that you do not risk being penalized by the search engines.
Do not Use the same color text on your page as the page's background color. This has often been used to keyword stuff a web page. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.
Do not Use multiple instances of the same tag. For example, using more than one title tag. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.
Do not Use any keywords in your keywords meta tag that do not directly relate to the content of your page.

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June 6th, 2005, 09:47 AM

dominoman

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Location: london

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Thanks. A useful summary.

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