So, you have a website. It’s got a fabulous design, you’ve written high quality content, and you’ve launched it on the World Wide Web… and now you just have to sit back and wait and people will come, right?
I’m not even going to say “wrong” there, because you already know that. Driving traffic to your site takes a lot of work. You could spend hours looking for advice on SEO, and digging through the good vs. the bad is enough to drive you totally crazy. So let’s start from the beginning, and take a look at the foundation for good SEO – then compare those items listed to your current site. Missing anything? If not, great!! If so… you can spend just a little bit of time updating those tools and over time, you will start to see a boost in page rank.
1. Metadata
The actual definition of Metadata is “data about other data”. In your websites code, it’s a list of information about your site – from the type of site code used, to the title of your website or page, to the author of the content – metadata is used to tell those wonderful robots what they will be finding on your page.
Why you need it: Basically, your metadata helps tell the robots visiting your site where they are and what they are looking at. It’s as simple as that. It’s kind of like the “welcome mat” for your website, as far as robots are concerned.
What to include: The recommended ones are description, keywords, author.
Description: The meta description is what frequently shows up under your page title in search results and convinces people to click-through to your site – try limit your description to 20-25 words or less and tell potential visitors what your site is about in a catchy way.
Keywords: Include between 8-12 keywords that are relevant to your site. It helps to use these keywords in your content, as well.
Author: Stick your name in there, it will help if someone forgets your domain address and just searches for you!
Where to find it: Metadata is listed within the <head> tags of your source code. The easy way to check and see if your site included metadata? In your browser, open up your site and then click “VIEW” > “Page Source” (or just “Source” for IE users) in your browsers menu bar. What you’ll see is a page with a whole bunch of weird code. But at the top of the page, you should see things like <meta name=”____”>. If you don’t, you may not have your metatags set!! If you have FTP access to your site, open up your pages and add this code within the <head> element:
<meta name=”description” content=”description of page goes here”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords go here”>
<meta name=”author” content=”your name”>
2. Page Titles
Why you need it: The page title describes the content found on the page. It displays across the top of major browsers and is the text that displays in bookmarks. The title tells search engines what your site is about.
What to include: Write a catchy statement about your business, use your big keywords and your name or your business name. Keep it under 70 characters!!
Where to find it: Open your site in a browser and look at the top of the screen. What does it say up there? You can change you title in your sites code by looking in the <head> section… it’s simply listed as <title>. For blogs, you normally have to change the sites title within the admin site (where you post blog articles from). Keep in mind you can use a different title custom written for each page, too!!
3. Site Maps.
Why you need it: A site map is just that, a map of your site. It tells the visitor what pages you have and how they work together and helps people and robots navigate your site. If you have a simple site (5 pages or less) you can include an html page with a simple map (a bunch of links) of your pages. If you have a complex site (more then 10 pages) it’s recommended to use an XML sitemap so the robots know what pages are there and how they work together.
What to include: This one is easy – all your pages. For HTML site maps, just create a linked list of all your main pages and subpages. Its highly recommended that if you use anchor links ( a link that takes you to another part of the same webpage) you make the link text actual keywords rather then “click here”.
Where to find it: This is tricky if you don’t have access to your server files. Chances are, if you don’t know if you have one, you probably don’t. If you have a small site, contact your webmaster and ask them to create an html sitemap to include in the footer (or navigation menu) of your page. If you have a large site, there are tools you can use to generate your site map. For static sites, you can check out http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ or use Google’s Webmaster Tools. For blogs, you can download a plugin to create your sitemap. I recommend Google Sitemap Generator.
4. Other Quick SEO Tools:
Domain Stability: Register your domain for longer then one year. Search engines like to see domains that have extended registration. This tells them that the domain has “staying power” and is probably not just a spam site.
Use Text: Fancy, flashy, sites sure are pretty. But they get a big fail in SEO because robots can’t read graphics. Make sure you have plenty of actual text on your site, your graphics have “alt” tags describing what they are, and you use relevant headlines in your content (like the H1, H2 & H3 tags).
Take Advantage of Linking: There are many, many ways for using links to boost SEO – I can’t go over all of them here, but here’s a few that can help.
-Don’t fall prey to link dumping and link spamming – these tricks never work on robots and no matter what anyone says, will hurt you rather then help you.
-Use keywords in your anchor links (not “click here”).
- Make your page links easy and clear (like www.yoursite.com/recipes.html – tells us that page will probably include recipes).
-Trade links with relevant websites and put them in relevant sections of content within your site – “links” pages with a big list of links won’t help you.
Want to see how your webpage scores on its SEO? Submit your site to http://website.grader.com/ and get a free report on your site. Once you have that report, you’ll know exactly what steps you can take to boost your site’s SEO quickly.
~Victoria Potts Keale is a newbie blogger, website designer, entrepreneur extraordinaire, mom, wife, daughter, sister… well, you get the gist. She lives in her hometown of St. Louis, MO in an old haunted farmhouse with her 2 kids and drummer hubby. She has 15 tattoos and wants more. She loves 80’s music. She thinks writing bios in the 3rd person is wacky. You should email her and tell her what else to put in her bio – victoria@lynnraedesigns.com – but don’t spam her, cause she’ll get angry.
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