seo blog

Fewer people are making one word searches in search engines according to OneStat.com and it seems as if there is an increase in the number of three and four words searches. Their stats show that two word searches are still the most common though.

“Search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo can drive a lot of traffic to a web site. It is important that a webmaster or SEO expert knows what kind of search phrases they have to use to drive more traffic to a site.” said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com.

Can using fewer words in your page title make any difference with all these stats in mind? Have a look at these results from Google when listing only the pages from one site. After the main pages (home pages and main categories) and where the site listings start, you will notice that all the sites listed first are the ones that have only one word or no spaces in the title. This tells me that Google for example places more value on pages with fewer words stuffed into the title.

Searching with one word searches usually brings up the main site though, that is if the url and title are almost the identical. As you add more words to the search, so the site you are looking for has more sites challenging for the top position with those addition keywords.

My advice is to target a set of no more than three words on a page and you can start by using one to three words in the page title.

Keeping the source code of your pages lightweight helps in a number of areas. Size and usability are two of the main areas that are important to both the visitor and to you the page creator.

The size of the page that you are delivering to the visitor is not that important these days with broadband becoming more popular. “Chunky” pages can be downloaded in a couple of seconds with high-end download speeds nowadays. The bandwidth of your server or site account can be affected though, not much I admit, but can make some difference on high traffic sites. Search engines also usually only cache no more than 150Kb of any page.

To me usability is as important subject as SEO. Now in this case when I say usability, I am talking about the coder’s ability to work with the code. In large projects, it is important to make updating parts of pages and the site as easy as possible.

Now to explain a couple of ways to make sure that your pages, and ultimately your whole website, is lightweight.

Including or importing the page’s Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScripts is one method of lightening the load. You will see some examples below. When you do use this inclusion method, visitors to your site will cache the CSS and JavaScript files on their computers and therefore will only have to be downloaded once. This will speed up subsequent page visits and will reduce downloads.

Examples

Use the codes below to include your CSS and JavaScript:

Keep in mind that any JavaScripts or CSS that is specific to one page can still be external to that page to save on downloading it each page view. And another tip, use as much of the CSS file as possible; remove as much of the styling code from the html as possible and put it all into the CSS file.

Remember, keep your pages lightweight!

I firmly believe in making all the web pages W3C Standards Compliant. I have read in many place though that it makes no difference to your search engine rankings whether or not you website complies to these standards. I on the other hand am a little bit of a perfectionist and also think that it does make a difference in rankings.

I have noticed that with every new site that I have launched that has been W3C Standards Compliant and the CSS file also validates, that it has quickly received a high PR from Google (PR4 or PR5).

Making sure that your site passes the standards test is something that I recommend that you do from the beginning. If you leave it to the end then there may be too much to change and you will end up getting confused and frustrated. As you develop the pages, keep check to see that your page passes.

In my books, all sites that display the Valid XHTML link or image are well constructed and will potentially rank higher than others (as long as the sites has actually validated)! Does your site validate? Why not start with making your site

Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional as it a more basic validation. There are a number of different Doctypes that can be used when creating pages, but you can read all about it on the W3C site.

The validator can process documents written in most markup languages. Supported document types include the HTML (through HTML 4.01) and XHTML (1.0 and 1.1) family, MathML, SMIL and SVG (1.0 and 1.1, including the mobile profiles). The Markup Validator can also validate Web documents written with an SGML or XML DTD, provided they use a proper document type declaration which is stated in the head of the page.

Seriously, if you make sure that each page validates and you have some good high ranked links into your site, you are on the right track to being ranked high yourself.

Search engine friendly URLs should ideally contain descriptive keywords. The URL shouldn’t be too long either. Use your site’s structure show be reflected in the URL. Take a web directory as a good example and how the categories and subcategories are used as levels in the navigation. Example below is short and descriptive:

http://www.the100lists.com/Business/directory/22

Try to avoid using variables (or dynamic parameters) in the URL, as many search engines would only use these pages as subsidary search results. Some search engine may not spider them at all, especially if they have too many variables in the URL. Example below is of a URL with dynamic variables:

http://www.the100lists.com/some-page.htm?id=123&value=4

One way to avoid these parameters is to mod rewrite the page.

Also remember that the keywords that appear in the URL give the page higher value and potential ranking for those words in search engines. Another good reason for using keywords in the URL is to give the person browsing your website an idea of where they are in your site.

Be aware that SEO is not a set of strict rules that you can follow to guarantee a number 1 position or ranking in any search engine! No one can guarantee to get you to the top either.

The goals are always moving and search engines don’t readily reveal their algorithms to calculate who should be on top for certain keywords.

I have seen many SEO consultants guarantee #1 position and I thought that I should just warn you that no one can promise this! You can tweak your website and submit to directories in an effort to get it to the top, but there are no promises…

Well I guess I should start at the beginning, for those of you who are starting out and want to learn exactly what SEO really is. To begin with, SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimisation, and what better place to obtain the perfect meaning for SEO other than Wikipedia:

Search engine optimisation is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings.

So the main aim in SEO is to get your website to the top or as high as possible to the top of search engine listings. There are ethical and unethical methods of achieving this, but I believe in only using ethical ways and will focus on these only.

I will try my hardest to blog on SEO or tips on the topic, whether it be on site architecture, page content, or finding the suitable directories. My plan is to share as much as I can with you and who knows, maybe I can learn from you too!

Footnote: In some countries, for example the United States, the spelling is Search Engine Optimization. Google’s definition of SEO is an abbreviation for “search engine optimizer”.