I was talking with my boss and he was asking why that our website is not listed when anybody Google’s for payroll. I said I have no idea. Do something he said and asked me to research where the problem is. Then the idea strikes me of Google Search engine optimization. The contents that I have understood from Google documents, I am sharing with you.
1. Title Tag of HTML
Title of the HTML page is important. It acts as a first-point-of-contact as the search engine targets the HTML tag first. The content of the tag will be the first thing that will be displayed during the search whenever the user is typing as page title contents are displayed in search results. This will help the users to decide whether the displaying webpage URL and its tag text are relevant to the search or not. As Google is using the AJAX technology, it will hit the page and come back with the URL and along with some information. Some basic information like the location or any offerings that the company may be offering should be provided.
Best thing to do:
Avoid:
v Leaving the title of the page as “NewPage1”, “Untitled”, or “product/project name”.
v Choosing that has not relevance with the content of the page.
v Using the same page title for all the pages of your website.
v Using the heavy words. Users type easy words for quick search.
v Using too much description. The level of too much is not known but one should decide on that based on experience. Too lengthy and the SEO will take the partial of it and may leave the important thing to catch. Construct the description that you have in mind and keep on hitting the description until it reaches to 3-4 words. The purpose of this activity will be to keep the sound of original description that you want but reducing the words weightage.
It’s just the overview and not the brief overview.
2. Meta tag of HTML
Even though you have limited your business description to say 3-4 words and still you feel that you need to add summary so that the SEO scope of search will increase, use the Meta tag. In Meta tag, one can describe the business in 7-8 words and maximum one paragraph. Here you can use the Google webmaster content analysis section. This section will help you to analyze whether the content of Meta tag is too long, short or repetitive. As Google uses them as the snippet. If the title tag matches with the users query the description text will also be referred and displayed to make users more comfortable to search. There is another part in doing so, as Google implements Open Directory Project (ODP), a list of internet links volunteered and list further organized by the categories. If the snippet is not matching with the users query it refers to ODP. Also if the snippet is matching then whatever text is matching in Meta tag will be displayed in bold letters. The Webmaster Central Blog has an informative post on improving the snippet. So if the description is matching or interesting to the users, without going any further directly will go to your website.
Best thing to do:
Avoid:
v Copy-paste the whole content of the website.
v Putting the generic description like “About sports” or “My first page/ this are the webpage.”
It’s not the overview but the brief overview.
3. URL
After the title & Meta tag of the HTML pages, we will see now about the URL’s. I guess one must know what is URL but still, it’s the (wwwDOTwebsitenameDOTcom) that is known as URL. I won’t go into technical details about it but it’s important in this context as the URL’s are displayed in the search.
Whenever the user is querying on Google, simultaneously the URL is also displayed. If the URL is not user friendly the user will lose the interest. As the related part of the URL will also interest the user so it is recommended that you need to have a friendly URL.
A URL like http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1, is much less appealing to users. This doesn’t look professional and audience or the user will lose the interest looking at the URL.
Another thing, use “rel” attributes. What happens is your site may have advertisement, blogs and you do not want to get judged based on the comments of the blogs or rated based on the business advertisement. Considering the fact of security on web you do not want your site to be named as SPAMMY.
This advice also goes for other areas of your site that may involve user-generated content, such as guestbook’s, forums, shout-boards, referrer listings, etc. Using the rel attribute will tell the Google certain things NOT to be followed.
Best thing to do:
Avoid:
v Avoid using lengthy URL’s
v Do not parameterize the URL’s with session id or folder name or path.
v Using underscores instead use hyphen.
v Using the domain name and sub-domain names in the URL.
v Using the capital letters in the URL.
v Using bad directory structure. Do not use root >> dir1 >> dir2.
v Prepare two site maps, one for the user and one for the SE. To learn more about the site map, Google provides the user guide to site map.
v Occurring a 404 page error. Construct a customized error page or redirect the user to main page, in case the user deletes some part of the URL.
4. Creating quality content
Creating quality content is more compelling than any of the factors discussed so far. The contents are displayed once the user is finished with the query-writing in Google. The user has the choice to make from various websites that are displayed along with the content. So the content of the website should also have jargons, buzz words, security implications of the website, awards, etc. One of the most important thing here is the content should also be latest and not outdated. It should have the latest keywords that are in the market. Google AdWords provides a handy Keyword Tool that helps you discover new keyword variations and see the approximate search volume for each keyword
Best thing to do:
Avoid:
v Making grammatical mistakes.
v Making length sentences which will confuse the user with the subject matter. Try breaking the sentences into smaller parts.
v Publishing with what you have written in First-go. Do copy writing before publishing.
v Writing unnecessary non-subject matters. Write relative.
v Writing for the SEO but target the users.
5. Anchor text
Even though you have a URL with www.example.com, cover the URL with an eye-catching text. Links to your page will be internal but the user is not interested in the URL rather than his own interest.
Best thing to do:
Avoid:
v Using “Page”, “article”, or “click here”. Describe it, so that user does not waste his time and energy on it.
v Using too long text or too short text. Use descriptive but not too length enough so the URL becomes one liner.
6. Images
Agreed that pictures speak more than words but not always. Not always it’s recommended that you use the images. That will make the website bulky and will take time to load and this all will attract the user to let the website load and visit other available sites. And if they found the information in other websites that they are looking for, even though your site has it, you may lose the possible customer. Make use of images whenever it’s very essential or will make the difference. Store the images in the separate image folder of the directory structure. It’s also possible that the images may not be displayed or may take time and time consuming site may lead to “Time out connection”.
Even though sometimes when the images cannot be avoided, use the “alt” attribute of the image. Even if the image is not loading and the entire site is loaded except an image, alternative text will be displayed and increase the possibility to retain the tentative customer. Use commonly supported file types - Most browsers support JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image formats. It's also a good idea to have the extension of your filename match with the file type.
Best thing to do:
Avoid:
v Using generic filenames like "image1.jpg", "pic.gif", "1.jpg" when possible—some sites with thousands of images might consider automating the naming of images.
v Writing extremely lengthy filenames.
v Stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences.
v Writing excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy.
v Using only image links for your site's navigation.
7. Heading tags
Please do not mis-understand with head tag of HTTP tag. There are six sizes of heading tag starting with <h1> till <h6>. The top most heading tag will describe what will be content below it. Multiple heading sizes used in order create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document.
8. Robot text
It may be possible that certain websites do not want some pages to be displayed during the search. I am talking about the sensitive data like the client information or list, accounts data etc. In such cases use the robot text method which will prevent the search engine to access those pages.
There are a handful of other ways to prevent content appearing in search results, such as adding "NOINDEX" to your robots Meta tag, using .htaccess to password protect directories, and using Google Webmaster Tools to remove content that has already been crawled. Google engineer Matt Cutts walks through the caveats of each URL blocking method in a helpful video. For more information on robots.txt, we suggest this Webmaster Help Center guide on using robots.txt files.
Use more secure methods for sensitive content.
You shouldn't feel comfortable using robots.txt to block sensitive or confidential material. One reason is that search engines could still reference the URLs you block (showing just the URL, no title or snippet) if there happen to be links to those URLs somewhere on the Internet (like referrer logs). Also, non-compliant or rogue search engines that don't acknowledge the Robots Exclusion Standard could disobey the instructions of your robots.txt. Finally, a curious user could examine the directories or subdirectories in your robots.txt file and guess the URL of the content that you don't want seen. Encrypting the content or password-protecting it with .htaccess are more secure alternatives.
9. Mobile sites
Today world is moving very fast and shrinking as well making new challenges on their way. Users want to access the information from anywhere and anytime. After creating the site you come to know that you site is not visible on mobile phones. The reason could be many as mobiles come with different formats that you site may not support. Needs to consult with the experts if it so. Create a mobile site map and submit to Google using Google webmaster tool.
Some mobile sites refuse access to anything but mobile phones, making it impossible for Googlebot to access the site, and therefore making the site unsearchable. Our crawler for mobile sites is "Googlebot-Mobile". If you'd like your site crawled, please allow any User-agent including "Googlebot-Mobile" to access your site (2). You should also be aware that Google may change its User-agent information at any time without notice, so we don't recommend checking whether the User-agent exactly matches "Googlebot- Mobile" (the current User-agent). Instead, check whether the User-agent header contains the string "Googlebot-Mobile".
Once Googlebot-Mobile crawls your URLs, we then check for whether each URL is viewable on a mobile device. Pages we determine aren't viewable on a mobile phone won't be included in our mobile site index (although they may be included in the regular web index). This determination is based on a variety of factors, one of which is the "DTD (Doc Type Definition)" declaration. Check that your mobile-friendly URLs' DTD. If the declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML If it's in a compatible format, the page is eligible for the mobile search index. For more information, see the Mobile Webmaster Guidelines.
ONE LAST THING:
Even after doing all or any of the above activity and still feel that your site is not listed properly make sure that Googlebot is the first thing to refer. From here onwards you will be able to trace where the actual problem exists.
Make use of free webmaster tools.
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