Search Engine Optimisation - A DIY Guide!

I’ve put together an online quick DIY guide for everyone here, so that anyone who is interested (and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you be!) can see the principles of basic website Search Engine Optimisation. This is of course not the full lowdown… it takes years of blood, sweat and tears to learn all this stuff, so putting up everything is going to take a lot more than one post!

First, get on those IRC chat rooms and e-zines, they are a valuable source of information! Check out things like Matt Cutts blog and the Google librarian centre, as these give you vital information about the trends of not only the Google search engine, but the trends within the whole search industry.

When you are fully specced up on what is what, apply the following:

Search Engine Optimization

Keyphrase analysis

The starting point of any SEO campaign. It’s no use targeting keywords that historically get no traffic, so the correct keyword combinations must be chosen prior to any other work being carried out.

Server analysis and correction.

One of the most important aspect of SEO is the the correct setup and maintenance of the server that holds the webpages that are being optimised. A unique nameserver, IP address and correct setup of any redirected pages and robots.txt files are critical to getting good results and being noticed by the search engines.

Domain analysis

How long is the domain registered for? 10 year domain registrations give a good boost in results, so if a domain can be re-registered for a 10 year period it should be.

Link analysis and building programs

Inward links are very important to Google and other search engines – but these links have to be from trusted websites…links from old URL’s (5 years or more), .org and .gov sites as well as .edu and .ac.uk sites give much better kudos to the search engines than links from low PR (google pagerank) young sites. Also, online blogs and journal links are now given higher credence by the search engines because of the fresh content that they contain (although this may change as the search engine algorithms are updated to market trends).

Keyword page density and correction

Probably the oldest technique, but still very relevant. Analysis of keywords in the code of a website in relation to the bulk of code that makes up the website is a key factor in ranking well in the search engines. All of the code must be taken into account (not just the search engine spider readable code) as all has an effect on the overall page bulk and is measured in the search engine algorithms.

Page (text) content, ALT tags, link text, navigation and META tags all have a role to play to differing degrees, but this must all be balanced towards an overall page design.

Link funneling

Link funneling allows the targeting of keywords in pages, and in effect focuses the attentions of search engine spiders towards that keyword throughout a website, increasing prominence of a particular keyword throughout the pages. Prominence is passed and increased page to page, with multiple pages funneling into just one which will be given prominence in the search engines.

URL re-writing

Some URL’s are not search engine friendly, so have to be re-written to avoid falling foul of search engine filters. Dynamically generated pages that such as:
www.site.com/?printer=true&PHPSESSID=9069405534160d5a0866a228c3faf024

(from pages utilizing languages such as PHP and ASP) will be much more likely to be caught by Google’s supplemental index filter, and also will rank less as a clean http://site.com/page.html type URL, so URL re-writing should take place if possible.

Header analysis

What are the website pages returning to Google or the other search engines? If there are pages being returned with 304 (not modified) then perhaps it would be good to either modify the pages more often manually or put in a dynamic timestamp? Search engines love fresh content, so this is a good move. Similarly, if 404 (not found) pages are being picked up, then either correct the problem (if it actually a lost page) or redirect the page to something useful (if it is someone searching for a random page on the website) using .htaccess or the webserver. A large part of Search Engine Optimization is correcting things like this.

Duplicate content analysis and correction

Search engines, especially Google, love fresh, unique content. If you have used stale, repeated content in a website then it is unlikely to get good SERPS (search engine results pages), so good copywriting and fresh content is essential to maintaining good results.

Searches should be made for plagiarized content as this can seriously damage your own pages as it is seen as duplicated content by the search engines, and care should be taken to ensure that the code used to contain the content of pages created does not outweigh the actual content as this can also be seen to be duplication of content.

If there is more PHP or ASP code than actual text then it must not be at such a severe level that the pages are too similar throughout the website.

Unfortunately content duplication filter trip levels are changed all the time, so vigilance must be maintained on this.

Removal of Javascript to external files

Masses of Javascript and other code (like inline CSS) disrupt the content balance of webpages, diluting content, so every effort should be made to use external stylesheets and javascript files linked from the content.

Validation of HTML and CSS

An area often neglected, validation of HTML and CSS can have a good effect on the prominence of webpages in the SERPS. Website validation errors are noted by search engine algorithms and the presentation of well-rounded and validated code will give a good start to any SEO campaign. Any changes made to the code will of course have impacts on validation if done inexpertly, so checking for validation is a continual process.

Expansion of the website

Greater prominence is given to larger websites as long as the content within the site is unique and has some form of relevance to the subject matter of the site as a whole.

For this reason, it’s always a good idea to have more pages within the website if the range of content that you can present will fill more pages.

Inclusion of a set of glossary pages for your chosen pages is a good idea, as is regionalization of content so that you can get keyword term + city or region name.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Search Engine Optimisation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.