Organic SEO - Small Changes That Make A Big Difference

If you are looking to improve your website’s visibility, there a several small adjustments that can make a big difference in your search engine ranking.

The days of black hat SEO are behind us. Methods like keyword stuffing and spamdexing are still used, but are a surefire way to get you banned from the search engines. White hat, or organic Search Engine Optimization, is the only way to go. If you are looking to improve your website’s visibility, there a several small adjustments that can make a big difference in your search engine ranking.

There are two areas of focus: on-page and off-page. In the context of this article, think of on-page as anything the website user can see, and off-page refers to something not visible to the user.

On-page optimization. Taking center stage are factors such as:

•   H1 tags. H1 stands for “header one” and appears as the title of any given content on a page. It exists not only to let the user know what that page is about, it informs the search engines as well. This is one place to emphasize key words or phrases.

•   Body copy. For the most part, there are two kinds of content on a website: permanent and temporary. Permanent copy is anything, well, permanent. Examples include landing page text, content on product or category pages, or an About Us or FAQs page. Temporary copy is any promotional copy, news, etc - anything that is frequently updated. Permanent copy is important to establishing credibility in the search engines and for building inbound links. Temporary copy should be a major focus however because search engines love fresh copy. The more (relevant) updates you can make to your copy, the better. Announcements, press releases, a user forum, or a blog are all great ways to achieve this.

•   Website structure and navigation. Ideally, each website has a theme or topic, and each page a subtopic. The layout should support this in an organized fashion. If your website is about the Milky Way solar system, rather than information scattered all about, perhaps each planet has its own page, under the subtopic Planets. Next, does the navigation support the structure? The navigation should be user-friendly and easy to follow, leading the user on a clear path - from planet to planet for example. (Additionally, the design should correlate to the theme, and the “voice” should match as well. If your website is designed for children it will lay out and read quite differently than if for a medical community).

•   Internal links are another part of your optimization strategy and supports your navigation. By clearly linking up the content on your site, it makes it easier for the user to navigate, as well as being ideal for search engine spiders. Where appropriate, optimize with your key words, for example, instead of “Next,” using “More on Jupiter” as your link text would be more effective.

The idea of a themes or topics should be considered when looking at all of these on-page factors. The relevancy of each page increases if the H1 tag, body copy, structure, navigation, and internal links are optimized and support one another. Again, rather than spread about, both a user and a search engine will prefer all information about Jupiter in one central place (clearly identified), with optimized title and copy, and clear links to and from the content.

Off-page optimization. There are a few behind-the-scenes adjustments that can really make a difference:

•   Title tags. The title tag is off-page code but appears as text in the top bar of your web browser above the web address. The title tag is so important because it tells the search engines what the page is all about. A search engine places more importance on this than the H1 on the page, so it’s vital that it is optimized.

•   Meta descriptions. A meta description is a summary of the content, written for every single page on a website. It does not appear anywhere on a web page, but this text will appear when a search engine chooses that page for its results. It is important this is optimized, but still must be readable to a human (no keyword stuffing!).

•   URLs. It is more difficult for a user, let alone a search engine spider, to get to the Jupiter page if it is buried six folders deep. That is, milkyway.com/jupiter is better than milkway.com/subfolder/planets/fourmoons/Jupiter. Ideally, URLs can be written (or rewritten) to have the key word close to the root domain. However, a rewrite isn’t always practical for a site that is already well indexed, but highly recommended if you are just getting started, or if key content is buried.

•   Alternative attributes. When html was first developed, “alt text” was incorporated to provide alternative or substitute text in place of an image (for braille displays, or for those with slow connections). Nowadays, you can use this text to your advantage from an optimization standpoint. Note that this won’t make much of an impact in the rankings, but it will allow search engines to index your images, and will support your overall theme(s).

While any one of these strategies can improve your visibility to search engines, a combination of a few small changes can make a significant impact. Just remember that the results of organic SEO are rarely immediate. It may take 90 days or more (or even months for highly-competitive search terms) to see results, so patience is key.

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Comments

Wed, 20 May 2009 at 7:18 AM, by Scott Million
Thanks for the heads up. Organic Search Engine Optimization is not a simple process. It involves a lot of time and effort on your end to get it done. But if you get it done perfectly on the first try, then it is quite possible that you will be wallowing in success in any venture that you turn your site into.

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