And we’re back, with the third part of our Search Engine Optimization series. In Part 1, we talked about why you need to optimize for the search engines. In Part 2, we discussed the right research for your keywords. Now, we’ll cover what actually gets optimized for the search engines — Your website!
So once we have our keywords, where do we put them? Somewhere in the website, sure, but exactly where? How do we optimize the text, images and meta information of our website to rank high in the search engines? Let’s see.
Website Text
Descriptive text and copy is extremely important, especially on your home page. Most search engines read your text and attempt to learn what your site is about.
Often, search engines determine your relevancy based on the number of times certain words appear in your text. This is called, “keyword ratio.” It’s basically a comparison of the number of times a certain word or phrase appears in your copy. For instance, if you have 500 words in a web page, and “hammer” appears 9 times, its keyword ratio is 9:500 or 1.8%.
There is no magic number for what ratio to go with. Having too high a ratio can actually hurt you if it looks like you stuffed your keywords into the content. You don’t want to try to cheat the search engine by repeating the same phrase redundantly. Instead, integrate your phrase into your text naturally and seamlessly.
Tips & Tricks
- Write approximately 250 to 500 words for your home page. Describe your business and use your search phrase. Truthfully, very few customers will actually read your home page text, but that doesn’t mean you should only write for the search engines.
- Make sure each page of your website has plenty of text and call-to-action links which incorporate your keywords. (We’ll discuss website links in Part 4.)
- Repeat your search phrase often, but don’t overdo it. Consider whether your customer can still read the text and understand your message. For example, “Kitchen cabinet hardware has been our business for 50 years. Over the years, our selection of kitchen cabinet hardware has grown, and you can now view our entire inventory in our kitchen cabinet hardware catalog.“
Website Images
sample of a tool-tip over an image
The search engines can’t read images like they read text. If you use an image of a hammer, search engines have no way of knowing it’s a hammer just by “seeing” it. Fortunately, you can label your images, and the search engines read those labels.
When you roll your mouse cursor over an image on a website, you might notice a tool-tip pop up with some text describing the image, like “silver hammer.” Depending on the browser you use, that descriptive text is either in the alt or title tag.
Alt tags are primarily used for screen readers for the blind, and all images are required to have descriptive alt tags. Search engines used to value alt tags highly, but not so much anymore. Still, if you have a picture of a silver hammer, add “silver hammer” to the alt tag. It will help the blind read your website and the search engines will still pick it up.
Title tags are more appropriate for adding descriptions of images that go beyond the visual. Modern browsers will use this information for the tool-tip, whereas outdated browsers, like Internet Explorer, will still use the alt tag. Title tags are also frequently used to describe a link, and search engines really like title tags on links. (We talk more about links and title tags in Part 4.)
Tips & Tricks
- Don’t use alt tags for keyword stuffing! Search engines don’t weigh alt tags highly anymore, and it’s not fair to the blind. They don’t want their screen reader repeating, “silver hammer,” 100 times.
- Alt tags can be visually descriptive and a good source of keywords, like, “Man holding silver ball-peen hammer used for installing kitchen cabinet hardware.”
- Don’t put text inside images unless you have to. Search engines won’t be able to read it!
- Don’t make your navigation bar with images. Again, search engines won’t read it!
Website Title
There's your website title
The website title is what you see in the top-left corner of a web browser. It’s also the name of your site displayed in the search results in big, bold letters.
You can imagine how important the title is just to a customer who is searching for kitchen cabinet hardware and sees several websites listed. Does the customer click “Happy Homemade Hardware,” “The Best Site for Kitchen Cabinet Hardware,” or “Kitchen Cabinet Hardware for Less”?
Tips & Tricks
- The title is one of the most valued properties for keywords. Because it’s so prominent, search engines assume you will only put relevant text here.
- Your title should not be longer than 64 characters. Google will crop words from longer titles.
Website Meta Tags
The meta tags tend to be the biggest myth in search engine optimization today. They used to be big business for SEO, but not so much anymore.
Meta tags are tidbits of code placed inside the head of your HTML, invisible to your customers, but very visible to the search engines.
Many people have heard about the keyword meta tag, which seems like a great place to put those keywords, right? No longer. People abused the keyword meta tag so much that search engines virtually ignore it now. It’s still a good idea to put some keywords in for older search engines, but don’t put much faith there.
The other popular meta tag is the description tag, which is still checked for keywords by the search engines. Additionally, the description displays in the search results as the brief text describing the web page. It definitely serves a marketing purpose by convincing searchers your page is what they’re looking for.
Tips & Tricks
- Keep your description tag to less than 150 characters. More than that and search engines will start chopping off words.
- Don’t stuff your description, but try to get you main keywords in at least twice if you can.
- Sub pages don’t need a description as search engines should be allowed to grab the description from the page’s content instead.
Website Domain Name
Your domain name is the .com (or similar extension like .net or .org) people use to pull up your website. It’s your website’s address, but it’s also the most valued property for search engine optimization.
Search engines assume your domain name will be very relevant to your website and business. If your domain name is silverhammers.com, of course you’re going to sell silver hammers, right?
If possible, include your keywords within your domain name. Also, try adding a local keyword to your domain if you are a local business. It will help your rankings when people search locally and also help you achieve higher quality prospects coming to your website.
Tips & Tricks
- You can have more than one domain name: One for search engines and one for marketing purposes, which would be shorter and easier to remember.
Next
In Part 4, we’ll discuss links and search engines. We’ll see how important links within your website and links to your website can be to search engines.
Until then, happy optimizing!
