SEO Tips

SEO tips for web designers

Generally SEO is best left to those who know most about it. There are however a few easy to follow steps we can follow to achieve a little extra SEO before we call in the big guns. I’ll cover a few on them here.

Focus each page on a keyword. This stands to reason really, each page should have a keyword which accurately reflects the content. Decide which long tail keywords are going to be most relevant, and most likely used by someone looking for the page.

Once you have the keyword, make sure the density is right. Many SEO’ers don’t believe in density, which may be true, but until proven I still work on a density of at least three percent. If you can, use the strong tag at least once within the content for the keyword phrase. If the pager is a longer one, say over five hundred words you could use two.

Use an Alt tag for every image. Most of you will know this one anyway as it’s a good second defense if the image disappears or doesn’t load. Adding the page’s keyword into the Alt text on each image will tell the search engine what it is. Bear in the mind doing this adds to the keyword density of a page, so bear it in mind when doing longer pages.

Even though most search engines no longer use Meta Keyword tags, there are still a few that do. For the sake of a few seconds work, add them to the site. Meta Description is still important and is believed to be used by most search engines. As far as we know it still plays a role in sending traffic to the site and will show up in search results as readable text. Keep it brief and to the point while being as clear as possible.

Always create a sitemap and give it to Google Webmasters. It will tell the search engine what pages you want it to index, and is essential in getting listed on the SERP. You can either create it manually or use an online tool to do the work for you. Just don’t forget to modify it if there are pages you don’t want indexed.

Use the Title tag to its fullest. Include the page keyword phrase in it and ensure each pages Title tag relates to the page. If you can, get the keyword in as close to the beginning of the title as possible.

Last tip for today is to use the Header tags properly. H2 to H6 are used to prioritize the order of the content headings. With H2 being the most important and H6 being the least. Use them wisely throughout the page, but don’t repeat them. Having more than one of each tag will confuse the search engines. Repeating these can cause the search engine to think there are two pages, which will affect the SERP, and possible how the page returns on the SERP.