Difference between revisions of "SEO"

Revision as of 22:15, 7 August 2009

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Check List for Improvement Search Engine Visibility

These are some practical guidelines for how you can improve your digital visibility yourself.

Digital Visibility is a concept developed by SEO Online Services to describe how visible a web-site is on search engines and in other digital contexts. High digital visibility is necessary to score well on search engines, and work on digital visibility is often called "search engine optimization" (SEO).

You will get the best result if you use professional consultants to improve your digital visibility. There is still much you can do yourself however.

Here is our checklist with ten tips you should follow to improve your web-site's digital visibility:

1. Description Relevant web-sites/addresses

1 Check the technical quality of your web-site by using a validator! You can validate page by page on W3C, or you can download a free program that validates an entire web-site and gives you tips for improvement. W3C Validator Funnel Web Profiler - free download from Quest Software

2 Make the technical changes that your validator tells you to make! A common and quite critical mistake is that document types are not defined in the document - this results in a "fatal error" on the W3C validator, and means that your site could have problems being indexed by a web-spider. If this is the case, read how to define document types on W3C and insert the correct document type definitions at the top of the document, before the HTML tag. Go through the document after that and correct mistakes one by one as the validator instructs. NB! If you have a dynamic solution where content and templates are separate, you will most likely have to go into the templates to make changes. Ask for help from your web publisher if you can't do this yourself.

3 Make a site map and link to it from all of your pages! Set up a site map or navigation chart to simplify indexing and navigation in your web-site. Insert a link to this map from all of your web-pages. (Time-saving tip: If you put a link like this in the master template, such as in the colophon or main navigation menu, then it will automatically appear on all pages.

4 Exploit meta-tags, but be reasonable! Meta-tags let you write in key words and descriptions that influence search engines, and that are visible in the link a search engine returns as a hit. You should exploit these possibilities by writing in wise key words in the Keywords tag, and a relevant description in Description. But be careful! Because some sites have abused meta-tags to grab undeserved hits, search engines have set up smart algorithms to kill these cheaters. Therefore: Don't use more than 15 keywords, and don't repeat the same word in Meta Keywords. More about the use of meta tags

5 Get relevant incoming links! Incoming links are good for your digital visibility, especially when you are linked by other sites in the same field. Who links to you now? To check this, you can write "link:http://twitter.com/your_business for social media and or web address" in the search field of Google. This will work on most search engines. Avoid buying links on so-called link farms! The only way to get real links is to do it manually over time.

6 Repeat trigger words and keywords in the article text! There is no point in using a keyword in a meta-tag or a headline if the page isn't about this word. (Yes, search engines do know this.) If you want to be visible on the term "sporting goods", then the page has to concern sporting goods and the phrase should appear a few times. (But not far too many times - then it will suspect cheating).

7 Use Headline, Bold and Underline consciously! When you use H-tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.), the bold-tag and the underline-tag to draw attention to headlines and important phrases on the page, the search engine understands that these words are particularly important content markers. As a result, your site will rate higher in the list of search hits, than sites with the same word without bold or underline. You can and should use this to your advantage by selecting meaningful words in headlines and emphatic phrases. Words used in links work in much the same way.

8 Register your site in search engines! If you are not indexed, you can not be found. Google covers 75% of the search market. There are other search engines where you should register. Companies that offer to register your site on hundreds of search engines are usually worth neither the time nor the money.

9 Check which position you come in on different search engines. A good tool for this job is Webposition Gold. You can download a 30-day trial version for free.

10 Seek professional help, but be selective regarding your provider. If you use the wrong company, you risk them doing things on your behalf that can close you out of Google.