Website Search Engine Optimisation
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In our last newsletter we looked into researching and deciding on keywords for your website. Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important things you can do. You need to choose keywords that people search for a lot, and then ensure that these keywords are placed throughout your site.
How many key phrases per page should I target?
You should try to target no more than two or three related key phrases per page of your site. Any more than that, and it will water down the impact of the most important key words.
Where should I put my keywords?
Following is an outline of the main areas that you should place your keywords:
Content
Make sure that your main 2 – 3 key words are included generously throughout the content of your site. When someone enters a key word or phrase into a search engine, the search engine “spiders” will be looking for an exact match to these keywords on your site… they are not intuitive. So include them wherever you possibly can, especially in the first paragraph and headline of your site. It is best to focus on just a couple of keywords for each page, rather than a large number.
Writing content is a balancing act:
1. It needs to be written so that it makes sense to your visitors, making them want to stay on your website and read more, and
2. It needs to be written for the search engines in order to be found (ie. including your key words/ phrases as much as possible
Web page title
This is extremely important to both the people that are searching and to the search engine “spiders” which find your site in the search engines. The web page title is what you see written in the title bar right at the top of the browser. This needs to include your keywords, but they should to be included in such a way that it makes sense to the user who reads it… ie the title should explain what the purpose of your site or your page is . The title tag should be different on every page of your site, and it should be relevant to the information that is on that specific page.
In addition, when searchers bookmark a favourite site, the title is what shows up in the bookmarks. A vaguely titled site won’t get repeat visitors if the searcher can’t figure out from the title why they bookmarked it in the first place.
Description Tag
The description tag is not visible on your website but is in your web code, however this is what web searchers will see if they type in words or phrases into the search engine, and your site comes up as one of the search results.
This description is very important it needs to entice the searcher to click through to your site. If this first description does not attract them, guess what? They won’t visit your site!
The description should read like a sentence, not a keyword list. Try to write the most concise (25 words or less), keyword-rich sentence you can that describes your site and would attract visitors.
Keyword Tag
Again – this is entered into the code of your website. Due to overuse of this tag (“keyword stuffing”) many search engines now completely disregard it. So it is not nearly as important as it was previously. However it doesn’t hurt to include some here, just don’t go overboard. Enter your top 3 – 8 keywords and key phrases. Too many duplicates is not a good thing (eg web designer, web designers, custom web designer, web desiner, professional web designer). And make sure your keywords are relevant to your site. Overall, don’t worry to spend too much time on this one.
That should keep you out of trouble for this month. More places to add keywords next time!
How do I add my keywords?
If we have developed a Content Management System (CMS) website for you (ie one that you can update yourself), the following link will take you to a page which contains instructions on where to enter your web title, description and keyword tags.
Adding keywords to your CMS website
If your site is one that we update for you, contact us to add your keywords and descriptions.
Things to do in March
- Review your use of keywords in your website
- Add appropriate keywords and phrases to your content, website title, description tag and keyword tag
