search engine optimisation blog

It seems that the majority of webmasters have forgotten or have never learnt the basic requirements of search engine optimisation skills. The vehicle that will drive your SEO success is your web site and its pages. So before commencing any type of search engine optimising, make sure your web site is coding optimised and you’ve used all the following  basis SEO tips.

Importance of SEO Page Lay-out

These days to gain an edge an optimisation edge I suggest using a table-less css lay-out. (NB - sometimes within a css lay-out you can use a table but these should be sparsely).

Establish a fluid site navigation & include this on every page of your web site. If using heavily scripted functionality - include a basis text link navigation format at the footer of each web page.  Use either the title or alt tag and at most 5 words to describe each link.

Web Page Header Tags

• Use a title that makes sense.
• Use a Description tag that includes the keywords used in your title.
• Keyword tag - Keep keywords relevant to your page topic.

Although some people would argue that the keyword meta tag is useless, some major search engines still use this data. My suggestion is to keep it. Don’t stuff every possible keyword & phrase you can think of into your keyword meta tag. Instead keep it relevant to your page’s content and theme. It’s important to understand the your meta data should reflect the overall content of what your web page is about. Also note that the keywords and phrases used should also be contained in your body content.

Style Sheets & Javascipting

To affectively allow a search engine bot to crawl your web pages I always try to call style sheets and javascripting from external files. Of course some scripts must be located within your source code to avoid errors. However if you can call these type of files from an external source it will improve web page’s SEO.

Web Page Body Content

The Importance of H (heading) Tags

Make use of Heading tags. EG - H1, H2, H3. Heading tags also include H4, H5 & H6. Though I generally only use H1 - H3 tags.

A H1 tag should describe your overall page content. EG - If your site is about an Online Casino Guide then your H1 tag could be  “Players Guide to Online Casinos”. H2 tag is used as an overall sub topic of the main content. In this example your H2 tag could be “Online Casino Games”.  I generally use H3 tags for specific topic labels. For instance I may use a number of H3 tags for casino game types such as “Bonus Slots” - “Spanish 21″ - “American Roulette”. All these headings can use the with the H3 tag.

NB - Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that more than one H1 & H2 tags are going to improve your sites SEO score. These H tags should only be used once each on any web page. (H3 tags can be used multiple times on a page, but don’t overdo it!).

Page Content is King

Your web page text content is one of the most important factors to influence your page rankings in search engines. I’ve always believed that quality out ranks quantity most times. The key to writing good content is knowledge on the topic of your page. Again don’t keyword stuff. Instead try focused on each topic.

Keep things simple and to the point. Try not to puff your sentences up with unnecessary words. Above all maintain the overall keyword phrases and keyword topic of each web site page.