Tag Archives: search engines
How Website Redesign can Improve Search Results: Part 2
In the first of this article we discussed three factors that have to be given consideration during web redesign process. In todays article we will touch upon other factors too.
4) Download speed: A slow website can ruin user experience. A user is very much likely to exit a slow loading webpage rather than wait for it. Google has taken notice of it and in April 2010 strongly emphasized on reducing webpage download speeds.
Google went to the extent of saying that webpage speed will be factored in their search engine algorithm. If your website downloads very slowly then check thoroughly the root causes. Is it a Flash banner or a heavy image? Many times inefficient programming or bloated code can also affect speed.
Thus a slow loading page can harm you in 2 ways: One, a user will not wait for the page to download and move away to a site which is faster. Secondly, Google may penalize your website and your search engine rankings may drop across all keywords.
5) Sitemaps: Many webmasters may think it as an unnecessary exercise but the fact is that search engines take it very seriously. Both, HTML version and XML version of sitemap are crucial. While the HTML version helps users in navigating the site, the XML version helps in getting all pages of a site indexed by search engines.
The HTML sitemap should ideally be accessible form the home page of the website. XML sitemap should be submitted to search engines for quicker indexing. The bigger the site, the more advantageous and important a sitemap is from SEO point of view.
6) Page Title: How many we have seen titles such “Home Page”. Such titles do great harm to a site. Such uninformative title tells a search engine nothing about the page. A vital clue that a search engine and user can benefit from is wasted.
Rarely will you ever see a webpage opaque or uninformative titles doing well in search engine rankings. Always, add titles relevant to the page name and content.
7) Content Optimization: Good content is not enough. Proper use of H1, H2,H3 and links is very vital.
Headings and strong tags signal to bots on which text is important. Always use keywords or key phrases within these tags.
Internal links are another factor. Web pages should be interlinked to increase usability of a website. Links should be optimized by using keywords and key phrases.
8) Images: Images need to be lightweight. Heavy images can drastically increase page download time. Image names should have keywords related to the page name. If the page is about Ferrari cars then the images used should have Ferrari as keyword.
Never forget to add Alt attribute. It should be a short yet keyword rich sentence.
9) Custom error pages: Many websites lose a chunk of visitors due to improper error handling pages. A custom error page can help a user navigate the site even if s/he encounters page not found error.
How Website Redesign can Improve Search Results: Part 2
In the first of this article we discussed three factors that have to be given consideration during web redesign process. In todays article we will touch upon other factors too.
4) Download speed: A slow website can ruin user experience. A user is very much likely to exit a slow loading webpage rather than wait for it. Google has taken notice of it and in April 2010 strongly emphasized on reducing webpage download speeds.
Google went to the extent of saying that webpage speed will be factored in their search engine algorithm. If your website downloads very slowly then check thoroughly the root causes. Is it a Flash banner or a heavy image? Many times inefficient programming or bloated code can also affect speed.
Thus a slow loading page can harm you in 2 ways: One, a user will not wait for the page to download and move away to a site which is faster. Secondly, Google may penalize your website and your search engine rankings may drop across all keywords.
5) Sitemaps: Many webmasters may think it as an unnecessary exercise but the fact is that search engines take it very seriously. Both, HTML version and XML version of sitemap are crucial. While the HTML version helps users in navigating the site, the XML version helps in getting all pages of a site indexed by search engines.
The HTML sitemap should ideally be accessible form the home page of the website. XML sitemap should be submitted to search engines for quicker indexing. The bigger the site, the more advantageous and important a sitemap is from SEO point of view.
6) Page Title: How many we have seen titles such “Home Page”. Such titles do great harm to a site. Such uninformative title tells a search engine nothing about the page. A vital clue that a search engine and user can benefit from is wasted.
Rarely will you ever see a webpage opaque or uninformative titles doing well in search engine rankings. Always, add titles relevant to the page name and content.
7) Content Optimization: Good content is not enough. Proper use of H1, H2,H3 and links is very vital.
Headings and strong tags signal to bots on which text is important. Always use keywords or key phrases within these tags.
Internal links are another factor. Web pages should be interlinked to increase usability of a website. Links should be optimized by using keywords and key phrases.
8) Images: Images need to be lightweight. Heavy images can drastically increase page download time. Image names should have keywords related to the page name. If the page is about Ferrari cars then the images used should have Ferrari as keyword.
Never forget to add Alt attribute. It should be a short yet keyword rich sentence.
9) Custom error pages: Many websites lose a chunk of visitors due to improper error handling pages. A custom error page can help a user navigate the site even if s/he encounters page not found error.
Contextual Link Building – Is it Worth Your Money?
Link building Services is an essential part of an Internet marketer’s daily undertakings. To be specific and to give further emphasis, the more links our websites get, the higher search engine rankings your site will get. Aside from the traffic that you will get once you once on top of the search engine result, this is also critical in establishing your website’s reputation online. This actually has a direct and/or indirect effect on your page ranking. Although, there are some webmasters who are not too particular with page ranks, I still believe that high PRs can really boost one’s online business and hence if possible you should try and buy high PR links .
In this article, I will talk about contextual link building and whether it is really worth investing on. There are several ways that you can build links. Some do it on their own, while bigger online businesses acquire the services of link building companies. If you want to dominate the search engines, you have to work on building natural links for your site. Gone are the days when webmasters would just exchange links indiscriminately. These days, search engines (Google in particular) are very keen on how websites exchange links among themselves. It is important that you are only linked to sites that are relevant to the nature of your business.
Thus, you don’t simply accept offers from irrelevant sites because it will be an utter waste of your time. Furthermore, natural linkages will make your site more appealing to search engines. For this reason, website owners allocate a good portion of their budget to outsource services of a link builder or a company that specializes in these types of services. Since this can be quite tasking and time consuming, I personally recommend to have a professional link builder who will ensure that your site gets relevant linkages with other sites. I know this may be a bit expensive but the results are very beneficial to your business.
In the long run, you will be able to recoup the money that you have invested. Just make sure though that you invest on the right person or the right company. I have heard a lot of stories of fellow Internet marketers who paid hefty amounts of money to “professionals or experts” who were supposed to do link exchanges for them. But they ended up with no good results in the end. Going back to what I’ve mentioned about contextual link building, you have to learn the benefits of contextual links in order to have a clear vision on how to do contextual link building.
I don’t necessarily mean that you learn it and do it yourself. You can always have somebody else do it but having enough knowledge on contextual link building will help you in finding the expert who will do this for you. Knowing will spare you from being fooled by scumbags online. Good companies that do contextual link building will make sure that other blog sites and websites write about your keyword topic. There will be contextual links on the contents of their sites, which will point back to your own homepage. Therefore, links will be embedded on their contents making it look more natural.
This makes contextual link building more powerful. It can boost your popularity over the net. Contextual link building is one of the best ways of creating inbound links. Not to mention the fact that it leaves permanent links to your website. Isn’t it worth investing after all?