SEO Best Practices from Apheus
Creating an optimized, Search Engine Friendly website is key to your success on the internet. Even if you promote your website through pay-per-click advertising, you should still make your website easy to view by both human eyes and search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can actually be a complicated process, but Apheus has compiled a list of SEO best practices that can help your website naturally rank higher in search engine results.
Keep SEO Simple
You can put yourself into "harm's way" with the search engines if you make things too complicated. Your website should follow the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Creating a website that is so overly complex or made entirely with javascript or Flash can be detrimental to your long term goals if you plan on utilizing search engines as your main source of traffic. Search engines cannot read javascript or Flash links, making it impossible for your website to be spidered. Making sure that your website maintains it's Search Engine Friendly status is important and hard to navigate websites are simply not helpful.
Use Descriptive Tags and Text
There are many places on a webpage that give you the opportunity to insert descriptive tags that are very beneficial. In the section of every webpage, there should be a title tag, a description tag, and a keywords tag. While the keywords tag has taken on less importance in recent years, it is still recommended that keywords be included in this meta tag. Make sure that all tags in your website are accurate and descriptive. Giving a webpage the title of "Page 1" isn't as descriptive as calling it "SEO Best Practices from Apheus."
Use Header Tags
Using appropriate header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) in your text is important if properly implemented. The first header tag on your page should always be an H1 tag, then follow it up with relative headers. When designing a website, think of header tags as an outline structure:
- Header 1
- Header 2
- Header 3
- Header 3
- Header 2
- Header 3
- Header 3
- Header 2
- Header 3
- Header 3
- Header 4
- Header 4
- Header 3
- Header 2
Not only will the structure keep your content organized, but it will also help the search engine understand the importance of the content on the webpage. Experience has proven that search engines rely heavily upon the text contained in the H1 tag, so make sure that the text contained in the H1 tag is relative and descriptive as to the content contained within the page. Header tags should be specific and concise and are an integral part in search engine optimization.
Use ALT Text on Images
Search engines cannot read the text contained within an image. Therefore, it is very important that all images on your page contain relative and accurate alternate text (the ALT text or tag). You should never use images to stuff keywords into your webpage. Text that accurately describes the image is always best. For example, if you view the ALT text for the Apheus logo at the top of this page, you'll notice that it appropriately reads "Apheus Web Design."
Use Appropriate Linking Methods
Keeping your website easy to navigate is essential - using Search Engine Friendly URL's at all times. When a search engine spiders your website, it's looking for links to follow. This includes links that are both resident on your website and off-site links. If you create a webpage that isn't linked from anywhere, then a search engine will never be able to find it. Every webpage on your website should be linked with at least one static link. Using a sitemap to index and show all of the links on your website is a very idea when optimizing your website for links.
Links from Other Websites
Getting good inbound links from other websites can sometimes be a tough job, but if you want to improve your search engine rankings, it is absolutely necessary. Stay away from "link farms" and services that offer to list your website in directories. Your website can actually be penalized for these bad links, so its something you should avoid. Google calls these websites "bad neighborhoods" and they should be avoided at all costs. If you're part of an organization such as the Better Business Bureau or a local Chamber of Commerce, ask them to link to your website. Also ask your friends, family, co-workers, vendors, and customers to link to your website.
Limit the Number and Type of Links
While getting good quality inbound links is very important, determining the number of type of outbound links from your website is also important. You should limit your webpage to no more than 100 links per page. This is the recommended practice as outlined by Google's Webmaster Guidelines. While appropriately linking to other pages on your website is generally beneficial, linking outside of your website can sometimes be a tough call. When optimizing your website for links, the benefits and risks of these outbound links should be weighed. So long as the link relates to the content on the affected webpage and the number of outbound links is limited, you should be fine.
Search Engine Friendly URL's
Creating links that are descriptive are also very important. Most Content Management Software now includes options to generate "pretty URL's" or Search Engine Friendly URL's. Instead of naming your file page1.html or some obscure code generated by a program, try using SEF URL's to create more descriptive links. It also benefits your visitors since reading a URL that contain "seo-tips.htm" is more descriptive than "index.php&page=1." It doesn't matter what the file extension is (.htm, .html, .asp, .php, etc.) but the file's name is very important.
Content is King
Creating appropriate content for your website is an absolute must. No website can survive without good content that has gone through a rigorous SEO examination. Your content should be unique and relative to your website and should include appropriate keywords and relative texts. Using identical content across multiple websites or webpages will only serve to limit your ability to gain importance on the major search engines. When you refer to content, you should be referring to the text content. Again, search engines cannot read images, videos, or Flash animation, so its important to include plenty of well-written text. Remember, your goal is to attract visitors to your website, so make sure that your content can be read by humans and search engines alike. Content is King!
Create Unique Content
Creating unrivaled content for your website can be a daunting task, but it's well worth the pay-off in the end. By either writing the content yourself or hiring a professional content writer, you should make every effort to make sure that your content is unique. Tailoring your content to the specific unique subject matter of your website is also very important. For example, if your site talks about website design, then your content should relate to that subject matter. Creating good content for your website doesn't necessarily mean that you have to create tons of content, but rather good quality content. Good quality content webpages are more important than having thousands of poorly written webpages that don't have any real value in terms of the material.
Keep Your Content Fresh
Search engines like fresh content. When creating your website, make sure that you make provisions for expanding your website to take advantage of fresh content choices such as blogs. Blogs are easily updated and can add a great deal of fresh and unique content. Adding additional articles, pages, or new products to your website on a regular basis can also help increase the likelihood that search engines will spider your site more frequently. It also lets your visitors know that your website is up-to-date and that you care about the content that you are serving. But always remember to keep optimize your content by including relative keywords and links while maintaining the structure of your website. To illustrate this, we have created the Apheus Blog where we keep up-to-date content available for our readers.
Content Keywords in SEO
Keyword stuffing is bad - plain and simple! Search engines looks for webpages that stuff keywords and then penalize them appropriately. While each webpage should contain keywords that are relative to the subject matter, overusing keywords in an attempt to trick the search engines is frowned upon and is an ineffective SEO technique. Again, your best practice should always be to create unique, fresh, and subject-oriented content.