Jun 10
16
Search Engine Optimisation: 10 Tips For New Web Design
There are three types of web design. The real hard core search engine optimisation way, where look and feel are thrown to one side in favor of text , text and more text. There is the real design snob method, where the designer has no interest in how a site will be indexed by search engines and is only focused on how many flash movie sliders and menus he can create whilst making the site really unfunctional for the user. Then we come to the happy medium, a nice balance of the two. Web design with search engines considered. Nice CSS techniques combined with easy to read text, headers, menus and a few nicely placed graphics.
Here are my 10 common sense things I think about when planning any new site. Keep these in your head and you won’t go far wrong over time with your website ranking for your targetted terms.
1. Unique Website Content Creation
You may have heard it before, but I will say it again. You need to be unique if you want to control your niche or area of search. Write some unique and informative articles about your topic, create a tool that is valuable to users and make them return or link to you. If you can’t code a useful tool then give away something for free, but make sure it useful and not just any old thing you find online. Writing a 5 to 10 page E Book about your niche may take you a couple of days, plan it properly and describe to the user exactly what they want to hear. Maybe even ask for an e mail address in return for the free book. It will be worth the work it if it is useful.
2. Natural Backlinks From Popular Sites
If you write good content, have useful tools or E Books, then commenting on other good quality websites and blogs can help you gain some valuable links back to your site. Try and find blogs in the same theme with active users and preferably do follow links (you can right click the comments page of any blog and “view source” to see if the comment links have “nofollow” in the code). Make some nice comments about others sites and articles and maybe mention you have a similar article or site. Sometimes with a popular site using the authors site as a reference linked in your article about a subject will make the author of the other web site visit yours, who knows, maybe he will reference you in future or add you to his blogroll. Having useful content as in No 1 above will make other sites link to you naturally. You can also send occasional personal e mails to similar themed sites telling them about new content you have added and ask if they would link to it in future. For every 10 you send, maybe one will link. One good link is worth its weight in gold.
3. XML Sitemaps
Don’t build a website without one. Wordpress plug ins can make them automatically, and there are free services online if you search that will make them for you. Upload it to your server and submit to Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Explorer and Bing sitemaps.
4. URLs with Keywords
Whenever possible, try to have your URLs mention your keywords for that content. If you have say a currency converter, try make the URL /currencyconverter.html or something similar. Explaining to the Search Engine what the content is through URLs will help place the page higher over the long term optmisation plan.
5. Meta Title and Description Tags
Make sure you have unique content pages tagged with unique meta tags. The title tag is important. Short and descriptive is the best way, using your keyword or phrase once and at least the same amount of non keyword text to balance it out. So again for your currency converter, maybe “Currency Converter – Find Current Rates” is descriptive enough to get users attention and balanced keywords. A similar balance is recommended for your desciption tag, but here you can get more information in. Again, keep it short and descriptive but you can afford to get maybe your main keywords in twice along with another relevant term along with non targetted text. Stick to about 200 characters if you can, it’s no big deal if it runs over that by 10 or 20.
6. Alt Image Tags
Use some nicely placed relevant images on your site. Don’t overdo it though! One or maximum two per page will be enough, or maybe none if you have some images in your web design named correctly. Try to call an image file name that is relevant to the content. Then add alt=”relevant title” tags. On our currency converter page we might have a picture of a Dollar note and name title “currency converter dollars”.
7. Header Content Tags
This works similar to meta tags in the way of getting the balance correct. Try to have one “h1″ titled element per page and one “h2″ or “h3″ or both. Within the h1 try to get your most targetted term and another couple of words. Titles of posts on blogs are usually good for this as they will have a relevant term and a bit more description of the article. If you don’t have any other menus titled with h2 tags then try to use one or two as sub headings within your articles or content.
8. Optimising Internal Link Structure
Again, like the content URLs, use the descriptive keyword as your internal link to content. So on my menu I may have “currency converter” which takes you to that tool. If you have a site with lots of content deep down to say 3 or 4 levels, the occasional deep link from text content back to your top level pages helps a lot. Write a guide or help on a particular tool or topic that is featured on your top level pages, place this information down a level or two below the top content and link a phrase back to the top level content. (To sort of create a link loop). Don’t overdo this, but maybe maximum two or three deep “loop” links per top level page is enough from your deep content. It may take search engines a while to opimise this by crawling deep, but evetually they will find it.
9. Buy A Keyword Domain Name
If this is a new site, then consider buying a domain with your keyword in it. Try for .com .org .net or your specific countries top level domain extension if it is relevant to that country only like shopping sites. DO NOT have a long 4 word + domain name like “bestshoppingsiteintheworld.com” that is just plain stupid. Whereever possible try to avoid hyphens “-” unless its two very targetted short ish words seperated by it and the domain describes your service EXACTLY. Check out some expiring domain lists at namejet, go daddy or snapnames, try to pick up a short punchy one. Or register a new one if there is a decent one available. If none suit you, consider buying a premium domain for a strong long term project. Paying $400 or $500 or more dollars for domain name may seem a lot at first but if you start to make money, it will be well spent, trust me!
10. Submit To Major Search Engines First Then Wait A While
You may or may not have heard of Googles “sandbox”, well it’s far too much to explain in full here so I will leave it for another posting 
But to help minimise the effects of sandbox don’t go hell bent on submitting to every search engine on the earth, and submitting to directories by the bucket load. Leave that a little while 
first submit to the big 3, Google, Yahoo and Bing. Wait a week or two and check your site is indexed using site:URL. If so then start submitting to maybe 5 to 10 more search engines per week. Start with the popular ones and work your way down. After a month or six weeks submit to maybe 5 or 10 decent PR directories. Even if they are paid ones. Stick to directories with a bit of PR. Page rank 3 and above is recommended. Slowly you should see some results but my advice is to take it carefully for the first few months. Then when the search engines seem happy with your optimisation techniques you can step it up a gear. By then you should have an idea if the site is being picked up for your terms or not. If it’s not, then get tweaking your web site!!
Hopefully some of this helps you. Don’t be afraid to comment or ask questions on what I have wrote or anything I have missed.. Tell Me!!