SEO 101

Every page has its own identity, or keyphrase

The first thing you want to be aware of when building and structuring your website is that when search engines index pages, they look at each page as having its own identity.  In other words, a page that talks about "Search Engine Optimization Tips" will be indexed under just that, "Search Engine Optimization Tips."  A page that talks about multiple topics (for example: organic search, paid search, and how the two can successfully be used together) will be indexed under that whole concept.  It's important that you only talk about related topics on one page, and start a new page once you begin a new topic.  Why?  Because you want each page to have its own unique identity.  If it doesn't, for example if your page is about organic search and organic bananas, it will get indexed under a category that virtually no one searches for (ie. organic search and organic bananas).  Therefore it's important that you split multiple topics across multiple pages, so each page ends up with its own topic, and therefore its own unique "identity."  The keywords that combine to make up a page's identity are referred to as the page's keyphrase.

What search engines are looking for

What exactly do search engines like to find in a site?  Here are some key elements to keep in mind when building your website pages that are essential to SEO.  Pay careful attention to the list below - you can use the knowledge of your site's SEO structure to create pages that are more effectively optimized for search engines. Next to each tip you'll find advice on how you can take advantage of your site's SEO structure when creating new pages.

Descriptive page titles reflecting your keyphrase

Your page title should reflect the keyphrase of your page.  If your page is about SEO 101, for example, don't name your page "Search Engine Optimization For Beginners."  Name it SEO 101.  While the former may be more descriptive, you want to first make sure you've decided on a keyphrase and have your page title reflect that.  After that, you can build the description into your content and sub-headings.

Page headings and sub-headings in <h1>, <h2> tags

Your page title, headings and sub-headings should all reflect your page's keyphrase.  Note that you don't need to repeat verbatim your keyphrase in sub-headings (search engines get suspicious if your English appears fabricated and unnatural), but feel free to use variations of it or contain it in a longer phrase (for example, if your page's keyphrase is SEO 101, a sub-heading might simply be one of those tips, such as Search Engine Friendly URL's).  You'd be suprised at how clever search engines, in particular Google, have become over the years.  They are able to categorize terms and phrases based on semantics and more complex relations, independent of their literal association.

SEF (Search Engine Friendly) URL's/ filenames

Your page URL (address) should reflect your page's identity as well.  For example, a page about "Search Engine Optimization Tips" should have the URL "example.com/search-engine-optimization-tips.htm" (notice that Guru of Search uses URI's (Uniform Resource Identifiers) without file extensions - there's an advantage to this that we'll talk about later). 

Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URI's (filenames) are highly preferable to a cryptic URL such as "example.com/p.aspx?4233," or one that contains words that don't reflect the page's keywords.  When other sites link to your page (a big component of raising your page's search engine ranking), the search engine will automatically be clued in to your page's identity based on the keywords in the page's URI (address).

Link title tags and descriptive link texts

Just like neurons in your brain use neurotransmitters to connect with other neurons, hyperlinks are used to navigate from website page to website page, and from website to website.  It's important that your hyperlinks reflect the identity (keyphrase) of their destination.  You do this by giving your links descriptive link texts.   For example, a link to the page "Search Engine Optimization Tips" should say, "check out our search engine optimization tips page for details", and not, "click here for more search engine optimization tips." 

Your navigational links are the most important links on your website - as they tie all your content together.  Make sure that they are named appropriately - in other words, that they reflect the identities of the pages they are linking to.

Image alt (alternative) tags

Not all web browsers (particularly those on older mobile phones) can display images, and sometimes an image on a page will not load correctly or not load at all.  You can give your images alternative text tags (alt tags), using HTML's alt attribute, that describe the image, so the image's alternative text will be displayed when the image can't be. 

There is a second advantage to the alternative text tag - that is that it clues search engines in as to the nature of the image.  You'd be amazed at how much traffic can be gotten from effectively named images.  A sizable portion of search traffic stems from a search engine's image database, and if your images have descriptive alt tags, they are much more likely to be indexed in the image database. 

An image alt tag looks like this in source code:

<img src="example.gif" alt="alternative text" />

Visible text content

Just like search engines need an alt tag to find out what an image is all about, they have trouble reading any non-text content.  This includes not only images and animations, such as Flash - but scripting (text generated by code) as well.   It's vital that your pages' content and navigational framework (main menus) are coded in simple text, and not generated by images, Flash, or complex scripts with fancy effects.  While these might look cool to the user, search engines will have trouble understanding them and as a result your search rankings will suffer.

That being said - keep in mind the user first rule that we mentioned earlier.  Flash animation can enhance a website a lot, when used sparingly.  It's fine to use Flash as long as the website's core structure (title, heading tags, etc.) and content don't depend on it.  Bottom line - use Flash here and there to accentuate and spruce up your layout, but don't use it to house content.

Content priority

Search engines "crawl" your web page with their "spiders" - that is how your pages get indexed.  The spiders crawl a page from top to bottom, so your content should be organized accordingly.  If possible, list your main navigation first, followed by your primary content, followed by sidebars and footers and elements that repeat on each page. 

Content hierarchy and navigation

You'll want to organize your pages in a way that lets spiders figure out how your content is organized so they can easily find the pages you'd like them to index.  Your home, or root page, is your most important page, and should reflect your most encompassing keyphrase or identity (under which all your pages fall).  Your home page should then link to your second most important pages, followed by more specific pages, and so on.  This creates a pyramid type hierarchy that is easily traversed by spiders.  What's the best way to convey this information to spiders?  Make it easy for them: build a sitemap.

Next up: sitemaps

In the next section we'll show you how to build two kinds of sitemaps - a navigational sitemap, which is intended for your website visitors and search engines, and a search engine sitemap, which is intended primarily for search engines.  Read Sitemaps - roadmaps for visitors and search engines next.