How do you Optimise your Web Site?

It's a common question and a search on the internet can reveal many confusing and conflicting answers. However the real answer is far from difficult and anyone can make sure their pages are optimised.

The key to successfully optimising your website is in how you use your keywords. There are three main consideration for using keywords and they are:

How many keywords to use

How often to use them

Where to use them

How many keywords to use

It is not wise to try to optimise your web page using lots of different keywords. You should really focus on one or two main keywords for each web page.

Personally I tend to focus on just one keyword when I am optimising a page.

Incidentally when I refer to keywords I am also talking about keyword phrases. So I don't just mean a single word. A "keyword" can just as easily be a phrase. For example, this page is optimised for how do you web optimise.

How often should you use your keywords

This is a question for which there is no exact answer. In fact there is quite a debate as to whether it makes any difference. Some expert now belief that Google pays no attention (or at least very little attention) to how often a word is used on a web page.

Personally I suspect it still has a weighting and anyway is your web page is truly about the keyword you are optimising for then you will naturally repeat it throughout the page.

However there is the belief that the search engines do penalise pages that they believe are keyword stuffing. This is using a keyword continually on the page in an attempt to get a better ranking. It's a hang over from the days when the search engines did rank based on keyword volume. To stop it happening they start to penalise pages that had the keyword to often compared to the other words on the page.

So, it makes sense just to keep any repetition of the keyword to a sensible level. So what is sensible? Personally I would suggest to use your keywords no more than 4 or 5 times on a web page that contains between 300 to 400 words.

Where to use your keywords

Title tag

It's very important to optimize title tags. It is one of the most overlook tags. It must include at least your main keyword for your page. It is also this title text that appears when your page is listed by a search engine, so it needs to be compelling as well as include your keywords.

Ideally the title should be no more than 100 characters including spaces. Google displays up to 66 characters, Yahoo much more.

Also, get your main keyword in early in the title text. For example, on a web page aimed at offering web optimising advice to small businesses and the keyword for the page is "web optimising" I might use the following Title:

Web Optimising for Small Businesses

Alternatively if my keyword for the page is "small businesses" I might switch the Title to be:

Small Businesses Web Optimising

Description Tag

Optimizing description meta tags is also very important. Search engines check the description tag to get a good understanding of what the web page is about. So you must include your keywords in this tag. Also many search engines use the description tag when displaying your web page in their search listing results.

So, make it compelling, include your keywords and keep it to no more than 200 characters (including spaces).

Headings

The <h> tags (ie: <h1>, <h2>, etc) are considered of importance by the search engines and therefore you should include your keywords in these headings whenever you can.

Content

The main copy of your web page should also use your keywords. However it is important to remember that the copy is there to convert your customer to do something once they have arrived at the web page. If the copy does not guide them to taking the action you want them to take then getting your customer to the page has all been for nothing. So, write the page with the purpose in mind and try to work the keywords in naturally into the content.

Some experts believe that you should include your keywords near the top of the page as this effects the rating the search engines apply to your page. I'm not convinced that this is true, however if I were a visitor to your site I would find it reassuring to find my search keywords early on your page. I reaffirms that I have come to the right page.

Links

Use your keywords in any links to your page from within your own web site and ideally where you can on links from external web sites. Search engines following these links will pick up on these keywords as being relevant to your page. I also pop them into the title tag in the link code.

Alt tag

On all your images, use the alt tag and include your keywords in the text. Search engines read this text and use it for indexing your site. Obviously the text needs to be relevant to the image. Using the alt tag is important for addressing web site accessibility which is now a legal requirement in many countries.

Avoid some of the pitfalls

There are some pitfalls that you should avoid. Avoiding the use of Java, Flash and Frames are all good ideas. If you want to know more try reading my page about common SEO errors.

Follow the above guidelines on how to use keywords to optimise your web site and I'm sure you will soon see increased traffic.