Your Website Is Your Online Store by Mark Byers And Your Web Pages Are Your Products... Make every page of content worthy of your business. The vast majority of your website's pages are vital as every page of your site has an opportunity to be indexed by the search engines. This generally means Google in the United Kingdom, as it has almost a 90% hold on search activity. In the US it's 61%. You'll maximise the chance of a page being indexed if you can show Google that you've put some thought and attention into your page content. What this means is publishing a page that's providing lots of unique and engaging content. If a page on your website is not indexed, you have not managed to satisfy Google sufficiently for it to consider your page worthy of being included in their index. What this mean is, they don't think its sufficiently good to be seen by their customers. Learn From Your Competition You can learn a great deal about what could be deficient with your web site page by taking a look at your competition. The general standard of the pages that you visit will inform you about the standard you need to attain and exceed, if your budget and time allows. Your Message A succinct message delivered adequately is far better than a poor message delivered with bells and whistles! Having a look at your competitor's sites will assist you in determining how well you will need to deliver your message. Ensure you are clear about what you are going to be saying and what you'll be asking your audience to do. Think carefully about what words, pictures and even video would make a visitor purchase from you rather than one of your competitors. When you are clear about your message only then are you able to produce the content. Your Page Is Your Display Product Even if you're a services business you still need to treat every page of your website as if you're going to place it on a shelf for possible buyers to view. If the product you put on a shelf looks uncared for no one will purchase it. If the product doesn't provide enough detail it's a similar thing. The Factors That Are Crucial To Google There are no mysteries to what Google pays attention to and uses. If you ignore these elements the probabilities of your page being indexed are nearly zero. If your page isn't indexed it will NEVER be served up on a search engine results page (SERP). The list below contains all the on-page SEO elements that make up a web page. Some aren't seen by the human eye but they're inspected by the search engine crawlers and therefore are extremely important. - URL - Page Title - Meta Description - H1 Tag - Image file names & attributes - Word count URL - The Address Of Your Web Page It is beneficial if the URL contains words that have meaning. If it does it will mean something to a search engine crawler. This is a helpful page address 'http://ift.tt/1o1HVtO' as it gives a good idea about what the topic of the destination page is about. 'www.wd4t.com/node/88' is not useful yet it is the same page address as the one above, however it is the raw page address. If you have control over your page addressing you must make sure the address makes sense to a human being and that it directly reflects what a human and a crawler will find when they visit the page. Page Title - Times Have Changed Like the URL the Page Title is important and it's very definitely a factor that influences how well a page will rank. The Page Title is what appears in the tab of your browser. What you want to include in your page title are words that you need your page to be famous for but at the very same time you do not want to utilize the same sequence of words on multiple pages. It is vital you avoid duplicate page titles. Google excludes pages from its index if it thinks multiple pages of a website are the same. H1 Tag - Think Of It As Heading 1 H1 implies to a search engine the main title of the content they're crawling. To the human visitor it's the main heading. It should provide the reader of the page a clear notion of what the content of the page is really about. Meta Description - Your Advert This is undoubtedly one of the most neglected elements and yet it is one of the most significant. It is what Google will serve up if it thinks your content is worthy of appearing in search results. It must be produced with a call to action. If you don't write a Meta Description Google will choose for you what it'll show and this is usually not a good thing. Image File Names And Attributes Search engines are unable to translate what an image is about, they only know there is an image in place. The file name you give to an image helps a search engine work out what the image is about. In addition to this the search engines inspect the alt tag and the title tag fields that can be associated with pictures. These fields provide further chances to tell a search engine what they ought to index a page for. Word Count - Less Is Not More There is a fine balance between having too many words and having too few words. Users are often put off by having to read a lot , however , they will leave a page if they can not find enough information. What is clear is that Google does not like pages that are text deficient. It's vital to organize the words in a way that both keeps the reader engaged and satisfies Google in terms of word count. Conclusion - Make It Good, Make It Count In summary, as a web site owner you should regard your site pages like you would products you are placing on show. If your products look unappealing you can't expect people to be interested in them. The same is true for the search engines. If you'd like your website pages to be indexed you have to ensure you feed the search engines with what they're looking for from content. If you want your internet site pages to be respected by visitors you have to make sure they can see that you've put some effort into producing quality content. Mark Byers is the M. D of WD4T. Mark has been involved with the web for over twenty years and is a specialist in optimising sites to increase visitors and convert those visitors into customers. In addition to WD4T and it's clients, he also provides consultancy services to a selection of digital agencies. Mark has produced many articles on strategy and planning, web design and optimisation.
