Before building a new website many of our clients and often the companies developing the website ask us for recommendations on how to make it easier for the website to work well with search engines. I thought I would share our list of recommendations with the readers of this blog.
1. Hosting
Ideally, the IP address of the hosting server should be in the country of the target market.
For example, the hosting server of a website targeting the USA market should be located in the USA. Of course, this is not always possible but it does make a difference. I would like to say that this recommendation is critical; unfortunately it is not always possible.
2. Domain Name
The domain name should include the most important keywords that the company is targeting. This is rarely possible but it is powerful if it can be done. For example, www.antennacommunication.com is much stronger than www.antcom.com because it contains the word “antenna”. But “antcom” is shorter and that is the reason this company chose the shorter version. Of course, there are many other issues that are involved in the selection of the domain name including history, branding, trademarks/copyrights, length of the domain name, competition, and availability (price). This recommendation is not critical since the considerations listed above may take precedence.
3. Re-Directs
It is best to avoid re-directs from the domain name page to another page. For some strange reason website developers like to redirect www.company.com to www.company.com/index.html or www.company.com/home.php. In general, re-directs like this are frown upon because of issues related to the possibility of “clocking”. A worst case scenario is for a website to be banned from a search engine. The best case scenario is that the sub-page is much weaker than the real home page without the re-direct. From a user’s point of view a redirect to an internal page is awkward. It adds un necessary confusion. However, this recommendation is not critical since most search engines have figured out that the target page is the important page.
4. URL Structure and Format
Ideally, we like the URL to follow some logical format based on the URL, the folder for the website section and the file name. For small simple sites you can ignore the folder. Ideally we would add keyword phrases to the last part of the URL. For example, http://www.dell.com/business/laptops. As you can see this page is ranking well on Google.com for the keyword phrase “business laptops”. Ideally, the URLs should be decipherable as opposed to database references that are unintelligible. This recommendation is not absolutely critical. Many sites work well with the search engines without a URL format that is simple.
5. Frames
Avoid building websites in Frames. Everyone should know this by now but it is worth repeating because some developer are still using frames. For example, http://www.calgaryhotelassociation.com/. If you look at this page using www.seo-browser.com you will see that the content in the frame doesn’t show up. The frame just creates problems when search engines index the site. The search engine may index the content of the frame without the frame.
6. Flash
Flash is fine as long as it is a component (or file) on a HTML page. The search engines can’t read the content on sites that are 100% Flash (not yet, maybe in the future). Adding a page with special functionality, as we discussed, is fine. This page may not show up in the search engines very well but that may not matter for that single page. If you want the search engines to index the content of a website then this recommendation is critical.
7. Control of “Meta Tags”
With websites developed using static HTML pages this isn’t a problem. Changes and modifications are simple and quick. From and SEO point of view, the issue of manual overrides can be a serious problem when a site is developed using a Content Management Solution (CMS).
Selecting the right CMS is critical. To “optimize” the pages of a website it is critical that we need control (manual override) of the following sections on the web page:
- Title (absolutely critical)
- Description tag (absolutely critical)
- Keyword tag (search engines place no value on this tag but it is a great spot to place the keywords that we are using for that page)
- H formatting for content headings (changes should be possible with all CMS)
- Page content (changes should be possible with all CMS)
- Anchor text related to links in the page content (absolutely critical)
8. Home Page
The home page of a website is the most important page to add keyword phrases. It is the most important page to optimize using the most important keyword phrases. See: www.paisley.com All of the keyword phrases listed on this page are working well (first or second page of results) on Google.com. This recommendation is critical.
9. Text Navigation and Site Map
Search engines need a way to find all the links to internal pages. To make this easy for search engines we recommend adding a text menu at the bottom of all pages and adding a site map with a link from the text menu or the home page. There are lots of ways that this can be done but the objective is basically the same: make it easy for search engines to find all the pages of the website. In addition we often use the site map as a good place to add links to the “Focus Pages” or optimized content pages that we create for our clients. See the links at the bottom of this page: www.novatel.com/sitemap.htm. This recommendation is critical.
10. Avoid Duplicate Content
Most search engines will only display one page if it has an option of two page with the same content. Search engines are unpredictable in how they react to two pages with exactly the same content. Google seems to pick a page whatever page it likes best – often the oldest page. Yahoo often picks the page that was updated the furthest back in time (that isn’t logical which is why it is a problem). Our recommendation is to avoid duplicate content at all costs. This includes websites with the same content on 2 URLs like .com and .ca. This recommendation is critical.
11. Robots.txt File
Every website should include a robot.txt file in the root directory of the website.
The robot.txt file tells search engines which pages NOT to index. This file also serves to give permission to search engines to index the rest of the site. Including it is a good idea because all major search engines look for this file. This recommendation is critical.
12. Form and Thank You Page
It is our experience that including a form on a website is much better than adding a link to an email address. With a form you can force the user to give you information like a phone number.
The main problem with adding an email address is that you are exposing that person to email spam. Who wants spam? We recommend adding a form and thank you page (after submission) to the Contact Us page. If we use pay-per-click ads as one of the online marketing strategies then we can add conversion tracking code to the thank you page. This recommendation is critical.
I hope these recommendations are valuable.
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