Content and Website Abuse

Before we start with website optimization, we first need to understand the basics of search engines. Using this knowledge, we can then craft strategies that will give our sites an edge in search results ranking. Finally, we offer tips that will neatly summarize the concepts presented.

Crash course on Search Engines

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and more recently Bing, work primarily with text. They read through your site’s pages much like a browser does it. The difference is that most non-text information is discarded. The engines will then index your site and assign it a rank. This rank is calculated using a complex algorithm that gives weights to various page elements. These include relevance (how the search terms match the content of your page), authority (how many sites link and cite your page as reference) and off the page metrics (such as the number of clicks a search result gathers). Website optimization techniques can be used to influence the search engines to increase the rank of a page, but occasionally the search engines will penalize sites that try to abuse the system.

Use text for content

Use text when creating content as much as possible. As mentioned in the crash course, search engines cannot read text embedded in images. It is a good website optimization practice to avoid using flash or images as headings. You might gain better control of typography but it will cost you on result rankings. If you truly cannot publish your content without them, look into providing ALT tags for your images.

Keywords frequency and location

Place keywords in the title, first sentence and lightly sprinkled throughout your content. Search engines often preview a snippet of text that will display a user’s search terms along with some content before and after the keywords to provide the user some context. This means your keywords should read naturally and fit in with your content. Keyword stuffing – the practice of peppering the content with the same keywords – is not synonymous with website optimization. The major search engines have algorithms that detect keyword stuffing and will automatically penalize that site’s rank.

Use “pretty†URLs

Another website optimization strategy related to relevance is using pretty URLs which help to provide context to a searcher. Using a pretty URL entices a user to visit the site. This is because a link made up of plain English words is less intimidating than one composed of question marks and numbers. To improve this strategy, you can include your keywords in the URL.

Publish a site map

Most search engines “crawl†a site to index its contents. Therefore, an unreachable page, or a page too deep within a link hierarchy, may either not be indexed or given a low score for its rank. It is considered a website optimization rule of thumb to have your webmaster check if all links are alive. Having a site map ensures that all your content pages are reachable and are not orphaned or dead.

Takeaway

The main point of website optimization is not to game or fool the search engines into giving your site a higher ranking. Rather, it is to provide meaningful and useful content to the end user. Search engine algorithms try to approximate which elements will ultimately provide a searcher the answers to his questions. Our job is not to second guess the search engine, but to give the searcher the answers he needs.