Basic search engine optimisation

Gary Bagshawe · 27-10-2006, 04:13

Basic list of procedures for Search Engine Optimisation.

Below is a list of basic procedures to go through to optimise a website.
1. Title tag Probably the most important tag on the whole site. The information that is typed in here is what the browser displays along it's top edge and also what a search engine displays in it's title for results returned. Try to use keywords and phrases before putting your company name. It is ok to repeat words in this tag as long as it doesn't sound to "Spammy". If it reads well as a title you should be ok.

2. Description tag This should be a good description of what people will find when they visit your site. Again use your keywords and phrases as often as you like as long as it reads well. Keep the description short and to the point. Try making it so that people will want to click on it but avoid words and phrases like "the best" "number 1 site for" etc

3. Keywords Here you can put in all your keywords and keyword phrases. Avoid repetition as this could be frowned upon as spam. The larger search engines don't use keywords anymore but there are still a lot of search engines out there that do so it is worth including some.(Click on the link for more information)

4. Text on the page. I can't stress this enough. Get rid of the flash animation that takes forever to load and get some text on the page. If your keywords / phrases are found in your title tag, description, keywords and on the visible page as text (not graphic) then you will watch your site soar into the top rankings in most if not all of the top search engines.

5. Get some links!!! Search engines, like humans don't like dead ends. If a website doesn't lead anywhere it is considered a poor site. In contrast if your site has outbound links ( that may or may not contain your keywords) and inbound links from other sites and directories then it will be considered as more important than a site that does not have any links and as such will be given a better ranking.
Ok, the above information is the very basics of search engine optimisation. There are many other factors to take into consideration when optimising a site but if you follow the above you won't go far wrong. Another piece of information that I think was a quote from Google "if search engines didn't exist would you do it" This statement refers to Spam. If you think that you may be using spamming techniques you probably are. Don't do it, you will eventually get caught and may even get a ban.

The head content of a web page is the first thing that a search engine spider sees when it visit's your web page and there are a few things that we can do here to maximise the chances of getting a good ranking.

If you look at the source of your code the head content will look something like this…

<html>
<head>
<title>use your keywords and phrases here to a maximum of about 55 characters. Use your most important keywords first</title>
<meta name="description" content="Here you should write a description about what people will find at this page, Use your keywords and phrases here and try to repeat two or three times but make sure that it reads well too..">
<meta name="keywords" content="here you should write down your keywords and key word phrases separated by a comma and try not to repeat the same phrase or word too often">
</head>
The proximity of the keywords in the above tags is important so try to get your important keywords and phrases in first instead of your company name. People searching for your products or services may not know that you exist and so will not be searching for your company by name.

What are your keywords and keyword phrases?
These are the words and phrases that people are going to type into a search engine search field to find your site.
You must remember that just because you are familiar with your product or service, not everybody is! You will need to research your keywords in order to be able to optimise your site in the best way. One method of doing this is to ask family and friends what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for a website that provides your products or services. You may be surprised at the results!!! It is very difficult to optimise a site these days for a single word as there is so much competition out there, also consider the fact that if people are not getting the results for their search term they may well use a search phrase which is a combination of two or more words, they may even add a country or city name to their search in order to get more relevant results.
Once you have some keywords and phrases why not type them into a search engine and see what results you are getting. This is the competition!!! Have a look at their source code and how they have layed out their site. (Do Not copy their code directly) but get an idea of the terms, descriptions and titles that they are using so that you will know if you are at least going to be in the ball park.
TIP:- ( To view the source code of a site in Internet Explorer, click view and then source from the drop down menu )
There are many tools which you can use free of charge to help you in your keyword research and in my opinion word tracker is one of them. Keyword services for professional search engine optimization
Once you have decided what your keywords and keyword phrases are going to be you are going to have to decide where they are going to go. I personally don't try to stuff all of my keywords onto one page as this dilutes them. I would recommend two to three keyword phrases per web page.

I hope some of the above info is of help

Gary Bagshawe · 27-10-2006, 04:25

oops, sorry, I think this should have gone in tutorials and guides

Well look at the time, what do you expect.

danpen · 27-10-2006, 06:50

Useful information, there's a lot of conflicting inormation on the internet but this seems like good advice.

**stepheno** · 27-10-2006, 07:00

Hi Gary - excellent thread and I'll certainly be using it. Since the Tutorials and Guides are really Photography related I've made this into a sticky.

orangepeel · 27-10-2006, 14:43

meta tag keywords are pretty much a waste of time. I wouldn't bother with them. I've also heard some say that they actually degrade your rankings... dunno if that's true tho.

For google, as i understand it the best way to optimise your site is actually to use "title" tags for links and images. As I understand it these are the only things google looks at.

e.g.

Code:

<a href="http://www.pixalo.com/community/" title="pixalo.com - The worlds best community photography forum">Pixalo Forums</a>

However none of that affects your google pagerank. It only affects how your site is catalogued. The ONLY way to improve your pagerank is to get others linking to you. Especially sites with higher pageranks. For our photo galleries, that means you absolutely MUST have your site in your sig. It also means posting on places with higher pageranks too. You can use the google toolbar to find out a sites pagerank.

This place has a pagerank of "2" for http://www.pixalo.com/ and http://www.pixalo.com/community Obviously individual threads will have low (0) pageranks

btw, peeps who use flickr, pbase etc are excused from this lesson. Promoting your page there does nothing for you. Only for the gallery site itself.

Outgoing links benefit nobody other than those you link to. Don't spend too much time with them unless they are required for your site.

If we take the Members Websites here as an example. All those outgoing links benefit each of the members websites that are linked but don't do anything for pixalo. Pixalo gets it's benefit from the reciprical links the members place on their sites. Those links would be better served however if they had some sort of title tags on them (like wot i did @ mine) - That all said, be aware the search bots can't see the members websites section so really what we are doing here is only benefitting pixalo (seo wise)

Gary Bagshawe · 28-10-2006, 14:40

As mentioned in the original post, some of the bigger search engines don't look at keywords anymore but there are more engines out there than GOOGLE, and a lot of directories do use them and some of these have a good page rank and as such getting a good listing on them will help your pr in google. Also the above is just a basic guide.
another quick tip would be to take all the java script in the head of a page and make it into a .js file and call it from that file as you would an image. this removes a lot of text out of the head of the document making it easier for the robot to crawl.

***Steve*** · 01-11-2006, 09:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by orangepeel

Outgoing links benefit nobody other than those you link to. Don't spend too much time with them unless they are required for your site.

Not actually true, many people that specialise in SEO actually believe that the major search engines do take account of outgoing links as well, as long as they are to relevant sites, ie sites that have similar content. Just having outgoing links will have a negative effect but having a balance or outging and incomming links from other sites that have relevant content is supposed to be more benficial.

Quote:

Originally Posted by orangepeel

- That all said, be aware the search bots can't see the members websites section so really what we are doing here is only benefitting pixalo (seo wise)

Totally and utterly incorrect in every way

Not only can the search engines see the members website list and all sites on it but we also actively include the link with our site maps that we submit to the major search engines on a regular basis.

Search engine spiders are treated the same as guests on Pixalo and since http://www.pixalo.com/community/toplist.php is visible to guests then so is it to the search engines.

orangepeel · 01-11-2006, 12:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve

Not actually true, many people that specialise in SEO actually believe that the major search engines do take account of outgoing links as well, as long as they are to relevant sites, ie sites that have similar content. Just having outgoing links will have a negative effect but having a balance or outging and incomming links from other sites that have relevant content is supposed to be more benficial.

ok granted, but I still think the dangers outweigh the benefits.

I know for a fact google does take them into account, but only to downgrade your sites page rank. As I understand it they don't so much look at the types of links but rather the quantity.

However as the pagerank algorithm is very much secret, it is all speculation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve

Totally and utterly incorrect in every way

Not only can the search engines see the members website list and all sites on it but we also actively include the link with our site maps that we submit to the major search engines on a regular basis.

Search engine spiders are treated the same as guests on Pixalo and since http://www.pixalo.com/community/toplist.php is visible to guests then so is it to the search engines.

I can't actually find a link to it when logged out. thats why I assumed the bots couldn't find it. My bad.

silver · 19-02-2007, 11:22

the toplist page has some issues from a linking point of view,. while a user will click and be re-directed the redirection is via a script, e.g. http://www.pixalo.com/community/out.php?id=1 - this sends a 200 response and then does a meta refresh to get you to the 'real page' - this isn't the same (or as good) as a normal link (other things being equal)

regards the first post,. it's missing what is probably the single most important thing about SEs and the way they work,. a SEs value is to provide the most useful results for the user - depending on whatever search is performed,.

it's not about description / keyword tags or title tags - it's about how useful the site is to users,. I can be more specific in terms of SEO but in simple terms: provide what searchers are searching for,. high quality content

Sil

27-10-2006, 04:13	#1 (permalink)
Gary Bagshawe Rep Point Winner 07 Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Sheffield UK Posts: 2,232	Basic search engine optimisation Basic list of procedures for Search Engine Optimisation. Below is a list of basic procedures to go through to optimise a website. 1. Title tag Probably the most important tag on the whole site. The information that is typed in here is what the browser displays along it's top edge and also what a search engine displays in it's title for results returned. Try to use keywords and phrases before putting your company name. It is ok to repeat words in this tag as long as it doesn't sound to "Spammy". If it reads well as a title you should be ok. 2. Description tag This should be a good description of what people will find when they visit your site. Again use your keywords and phrases as often as you like as long as it reads well. Keep the description short and to the point. Try making it so that people will want to click on it but avoid words and phrases like "the best" "number 1 site for" etc 3. Keywords Here you can put in all your keywords and keyword phrases. Avoid repetition as this could be frowned upon as spam. The larger search engines don't use keywords anymore but there are still a lot of search engines out there that do so it is worth including some.(Click on the link for more information) 4. Text on the page. I can't stress this enough. Get rid of the flash animation that takes forever to load and get some text on the page. If your keywords / phrases are found in your title tag, description, keywords and on the visible page as text (not graphic) then you will watch your site soar into the top rankings in most if not all of the top search engines. 5. Get some links!!! Search engines, like humans don't like dead ends. If a website doesn't lead anywhere it is considered a poor site. In contrast if your site has outbound links ( that may or may not contain your keywords) and inbound links from other sites and directories then it will be considered as more important than a site that does not have any links and as such will be given a better ranking. Ok, the above information is the very basics of search engine optimisation. There are many other factors to take into consideration when optimising a site but if you follow the above you won't go far wrong. Another piece of information that I think was a quote from Google "if search engines didn't exist would you do it" This statement refers to Spam. If you think that you may be using spamming techniques you probably are. Don't do it, you will eventually get caught and may even get a ban. The head content of a web page is the first thing that a search engine spider sees when it visit's your web page and there are a few things that we can do here to maximise the chances of getting a good ranking. If you look at the source of your code the head content will look something like this… <html> <head> <title>use your keywords and phrases here to a maximum of about 55 characters. Use your most important keywords first</title> <meta name="description" content="Here you should write a description about what people will find at this page, Use your keywords and phrases here and try to repeat two or three times but make sure that it reads well too.."> <meta name="keywords" content="here you should write down your keywords and key word phrases separated by a comma and try not to repeat the same phrase or word too often"> </head> The proximity of the keywords in the above tags is important so try to get your important keywords and phrases in first instead of your company name. People searching for your products or services may not know that you exist and so will not be searching for your company by name. What are your keywords and keyword phrases? These are the words and phrases that people are going to type into a search engine search field to find your site. You must remember that just because you are familiar with your product or service, not everybody is! You will need to research your keywords in order to be able to optimise your site in the best way. One method of doing this is to ask family and friends what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for a website that provides your products or services. You may be surprised at the results!!! It is very difficult to optimise a site these days for a single word as there is so much competition out there, also consider the fact that if people are not getting the results for their search term they may well use a search phrase which is a combination of two or more words, they may even add a country or city name to their search in order to get more relevant results. Once you have some keywords and phrases why not type them into a search engine and see what results you are getting. This is the competition!!! Have a look at their source code and how they have layed out their site. (Do Not copy their code directly) but get an idea of the terms, descriptions and titles that they are using so that you will know if you are at least going to be in the ball park. TIP:- ( To view the source code of a site in Internet Explorer, click view and then source from the drop down menu ) There are many tools which you can use free of charge to help you in your keyword research and in my opinion word tracker is one of them. Keyword services for professional search engine optimization Once you have decided what your keywords and keyword phrases are going to be you are going to have to decide where they are going to go. I personally don't try to stuff all of my keywords onto one page as this dilutes them. I would recommend two to three keyword phrases per web page. I hope some of the above info is of help __________________

27-10-2006, 04:25	#2 (permalink)
Gary Bagshawe Rep Point Winner 07 Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Sheffield UK Posts: 2,232	Re: Basic search engine optimisation oops, sorry, I think this should have gone in tutorials and guides Well look at the time, what do you expect.

27-10-2006, 06:50	#3 (permalink)
danpen Forum Regular Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: West Yorkshire Posts: 875	Re: Basic search engine optimisation Useful information, there's a lot of conflicting inormation on the internet but this seems like good advice.

27-10-2006, 07:00	#4 (permalink)
stepheno Pixalo Crew Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 6,634	Re: Basic search engine optimisation Hi Gary - excellent thread and I'll certainly be using it. Since the Tutorials and Guides are really Photography related I've made this into a sticky.

27-10-2006, 14:43	#5 (permalink)
orangepeel Feet under the table Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Edinburgh Posts: 1,503	Re: Basic search engine optimisation meta tag keywords are pretty much a waste of time. I wouldn't bother with them. I've also heard some say that they actually degrade your rankings... dunno if that's true tho. For google, as i understand it the best way to optimise your site is actually to use "title" tags for links and images. As I understand it these are the only things google looks at. e.g. Code: <a href="http://www.pixalo.com/community/" title="pixalo.com - The worlds best community photography forum">Pixalo Forums</a> However none of that affects your google pagerank. It only affects how your site is catalogued. The ONLY way to improve your pagerank is to get others linking to you. Especially sites with higher pageranks. For our photo galleries, that means you absolutely MUST have your site in your sig. It also means posting on places with higher pageranks too. You can use the google toolbar to find out a sites pagerank. This place has a pagerank of "2" for http://www.pixalo.com/ and http://www.pixalo.com/community Obviously individual threads will have low (0) pageranks btw, peeps who use flickr, pbase etc are excused from this lesson. Promoting your page there does nothing for you. Only for the gallery site itself. Outgoing links benefit nobody other than those you link to. Don't spend too much time with them unless they are required for your site. If we take the Members Websites here as an example. All those outgoing links benefit each of the members websites that are linked but don't do anything for pixalo. Pixalo gets it's benefit from the reciprical links the members place on their sites. Those links would be better served however if they had some sort of title tags on them (like wot i did @ mine) - That all said, be aware the search bots can't see the members websites section so really what we are doing here is only benefitting pixalo (seo wise) __________________

28-10-2006, 14:40	#6 (permalink)
Gary Bagshawe Rep Point Winner 07 Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Sheffield UK Posts: 2,232	Re: Basic search engine optimisation As mentioned in the original post, some of the bigger search engines don't look at keywords anymore but there are more engines out there than GOOGLE, and a lot of directories do use them and some of these have a good page rank and as such getting a good listing on them will help your pr in google. Also the above is just a basic guide. another quick tip would be to take all the java script in the head of a page and make it into a .js file and call it from that file as you would an image. this removes a lot of text out of the head of the document making it easier for the robot to crawl.

19-02-2007, 11:22	#9 (permalink)
silver Been here a while Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 321	Re: Basic search engine optimisation the toplist page has some issues from a linking point of view,. while a user will click and be re-directed the redirection is via a script, e.g. http://www.pixalo.com/community/out.php?id=1 - this sends a 200 response and then does a meta refresh to get you to the 'real page' - this isn't the same (or as good) as a normal link (other things being equal) regards the first post,. it's missing what is probably the single most important thing about SEs and the way they work,. a SEs value is to provide the most useful results for the user - depending on whatever search is performed,. it's not about description / keyword tags or title tags - it's about how useful the site is to users,. I can be more specific in terms of SEO but in simple terms: provide what searchers are searching for,. high quality content Sil

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