SEO Part 2 - Design, Link Structure & Keywords

 

In Part 2 of my guide to SEO we're going to look at how your site's design can influence your search results & lots more.



Search engines aren't manned by human beings so they don't view the content in the same way as you or I. When crawling your site for indexable content the only parts they can see is content that is in HTML form. Images and flash are pretty much invisible to them that is why it is so important to assign your images alt attributes to ensure they're searchable. CSS styling of images will also ensure they are seen by the search engines. If you post a lot of relevant videos i.e. tutorials then it is a good idea to accompany these videos with a text description. There is a way to check what information the search engines can see by viewing a cache version of your site. To do this type cache:yoururl and it will display a copy of your website as it is seen by the search engines.

For example here's a standard and cached version of Girl Does Geek.

[caption id="attachment_212" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="standard"][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_213" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="cached"][/caption]

 

You'll notice that my page looks the same to spiders as it does to human visitors thanks to the CSS styling that I use to build my design. But if you look at the site below you'll notice that hardly any of the content shows up when viewing the cached version as the site is predominantly flash-based.

[caption id="attachment_211" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="standard"][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_209" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="cached"][/caption]

 



 

A good link structure is also imperative if you'd like to maximise your blog's potential and attract new readers through search results. By this I mean that the search engine spiders must be able to reach all pages on your website from any other page if you wish those pages to garner search result listings. This isn't really necessary for some pages as you don't really need your contact me page to appear in search results but for some pages it is necessary. A text-based navigation system is especially useful for this reason.

 



 

Keywords are pretty darn vital to searches. The whole search process is based on those magic keywords. When the spiders crawl the internet  and index its content they create a database for each keyword. So instead of searching the whole of the internet they'll search the database related to the keyword that people are searching for. So it is of course wise to use keywords carefully as they're key to a good ranking. To best benefit make sure to:

• Use the keyword in your post title (title tag) as close to the beginning of the title as possible.


• Make sure the keyword features in the body of the post at least 3 times.


• The keyword should appear in bold at least once in your post and once in the "alt" attribute of an image.


• Keywords should also appear in the url of your post (this is why descriptive urls are so important).

Now let us delve a little deeper into title tags. Titles are meant to be a short description of a page or posts content. They are useful for searchers and particularly important for SEO. So here are some tips on using title tags.

• Keep titles to under 70 characters as that is as long as search engines can handle. Any longer and the end of the title won't appear in search results.


• The closer to the start of the title that a keyword is, the more like a user is to click on the link.


• Create a title that encourages click through. So descriptive but inviting post titles are a must.

Lastly for Part 2 I'll explain what a meta description is. Basically it is a short description of a post or pages content and it appears underneath the title in search results. It is good practice to keep it to under 160 characters as like the title search engines are limited to a certain number of characters. If like me you use Thesis the post pages comes in-built with a field for adding your meta description. Other WordPress users may wish to use the All-in-One SEO plugin to alter their meta description. Meta description doesn't effect where you appear in search results but it is important for drawing in readers and encouraging click-through. So make it good.

So that's Part 2 done and dusted. Hope your head isn't hurting from all the SEO knowledge coming your way as there is plenty more to come. Part 3 is on its way very soon.