Search engine optimisation is so easy when the Web Widgets content management system does all the search engine optimisation work for you. We use our SEO expertese to automatically formulate best practise meta titles and descriptions and get you ranked and listed higher on google.
You can override with your own meta tags, titles, description and keywords, by merely filling in the boxes when you "rename" each page. Or the SEO expert of your choice can do this for you.
Web Widgets uses natural URLs for most pages and you can override these with your own keyword friendly filenames. All our product images have product title friendly "alt tags" and all our links wizards automatically insert keyphrase text. We automatically generate sitemaps and breadcrumb trails, and footers with your region name included.
Now that the basics are taken of by us, all you need to do is to work out your keyphrases, and write your content right.
The most important choices you can make each time you create or update a page is to use keywords for the page title and use your keyphrases twice in your first readable paragraph on each page. Read the first paragraph of this page again, and see how we sneakily used our keyphrase for this page, "search engine optimisation", twice, and also the abrieviation.
More Search Engine Optimisation Tips
- Google - Google does not care about any meta keywords you make up. Google cares about the text on your pages, and on the pages that link to you. Google cares most about the headings, page meta title, and the underlined text in the links that link to you. Google cares alot about the pages that link to you. Make sure that links to your website are from other reputible websites, hopefully some what related in nature to your website. Think of a link as a business referral. We value referrals from people we trust more, and the same goes for links.
- Think about the product or service keywords that someone would enter in a search engine trying to find a business "like yours". It might be obvious from the photos and branding what your product is, but imagine a common mistake: an appliance store has one menu button called televisions, and under that page they have links for "plasma" and "14 inch", however, the words "plasma" and "television" never appear on the same page. If someone is likely to be searching for "plasma televisions" then you need to have the phrase "plasma televisions" on the page that has a picture of the plasma television. Preferably mention that phrase several times (even put some common misspellings at the bottom of the page, in small print). The higher up the page the words appear, the better. Try and put the sentence "Plasma televisions from WidgetCo are the best..." as the first sentence on your product information pages, before listing all the specs.
- Include the name of your product names several times in the content of your website. eg Rather than saying "We sell widgets" Say "MyName sells widgets". Go to your home page right now, and count the number of times your company name appears. Don't count images and graphics, because search engines can't read text in photos, graphics, logos etc. When your customer searches on your company name, you want a search engine to find it more often on your website, than on anyone elses. Otherwise, your website will be relegated to second place, or perhaps not found at all. Your website must be number one for your very own business or product name. Look for all the places where you use the word "we" or "us" and change to your company name.
- Put your geographical location, i.e. your physical address, in the footer on as many pages as possible. Although you might hope to sell to people all over the world, people commonly search according to locality (eg "plasma televisions auckland"). If you don't have that location listed, then a competitor who did have the site listed, is going to get higher ranking. List up to 5 cities if you have a large delivery area, and always put your country name in. When you show your relationship to a country, you inspire much more trust in the consumers of that country (indicating legal jurisdiction).
- In the title of your website, don't just use your acronym, or company name. Make a title with keywords first, and the company name last (eg. something short and sweet like "Flowers from FloristsInc). Your company name is generally unique, but with competitive keywords, you get points for having keywords on the left.
- Be generous with the content on your website. Have about three paragraphs of text, containing plenty of keywords phrases, on any page clickable from the home page, or from a menu button. You can bury more detailed information further down on your website. Remember... too few words will prevent you from being search optimised. Too many words will scare a real person from reading it at all.
- If you are in tourism, or your service/product is of interest to foreign language speakers, then use multilingual keywords and phrases somewhere in your website - perhaps dedicate a page to each language. Even in your home country, non english speakers are a significant population, Korean in NZ, Spanish in the US. There are several language translaters on the internet like http://babelfish.altavista.com/
- Get other people to link to your website. A ranking decision is based on the number of people who link to your website - eg if 50 people consider your site important enough to link to, then it must be more important than a site that has 30 links. However, don't trick search engines with cheap link programmes, they will mark you down for tht. Google also cares how many people link to the sites that link to you, and so on. Never link to more than 50 webpages from any one webpage, and don't value anyone else who gives you a link from a linking program or web directory, unless the directory is known to be useful. The best way to get valuable links is to do the hard work. Contact all your friends, suppliers, customers who have websites and get them to link to your website. Do the same for them. The most valuable links will come from your suppliers and retailers, and other websites of interest to your industry sector.
- When linking to your website, or linking internal pages, make sure the link text (the underlined text) contains keywords. Google takes note of the underlined text in links - eg "Hamilton Information". It is more effective to be specific and direct when using link text. Then search engines will know exactly what the webpage at the other end of the link will be about. Here is an example of keywords not being utilised. "For more information about Hamilton, click here". To a search engine, this is a website about "click here" rather than "Hamilton information".
- Use your keywords in your filenames and domain names... (thats the "save as filename" option in web widgets). Webpage filenames appear in the URL of search listings. Google will bold the text of any keywords found in a domain name. So a web page about "search engine optimisation" should have a filename of "search-engine-optimisation.html".
- Join some popular online forums of interest to your industry sector and discuss topics intelligently, always including your URL in the footer of your email. Do not spam a forum with obvious advertising. People aren't stupid, and will skip your message if you do this. You can find thousands of popular usenet newsgroups here; http://groups.google.com.
- Change the content on your home page on a regular basis. Update the copyright year number. Many search engines give higher rankings to pages which are recently updated, but have existed for a long time. Recent news content also indicates to a customer that your business is still running and that any emails will be answered quickly. If they see dates on your website that are two years old, then it's probably not worth the time to fill out an enquiry form.
- Take care on your choice of web designer or content management system. For example, Web Widgets Content Management System generates web pages suitable for indexing by search engines. Web Widgets also provides an easy way for you to update your keywords without technical expertise.
- Avoid the excessive use of Flash or ShockWave on your website. Although a Flash website looks great, no one will be able to find your site. Most graphic designers who use alot of Flash forget to do the most basic of search engine optimisation - including page titles, keywords, and alternative (non flash) representations of the website. Flash sites look good, but you can hardly ever find them in search engines.
- Submit your site to as many search engines as possible. It takes time, but it's worth it.
- Use our Web Stats to monitor your traffic, and search engine optimisation success. See which other websites are giving hits to your website, which search engines are working, and which keywords people have used to find you. Web Stats come free with every domain you register and host with us. (more info on our statistics here)
- Search around for more information on the internet, as SEO best practices are always changing. Read some excellent information from Google here - http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/
So don't wait, do it now! Make some changes and watch your ranking on google go up and down over the forthcoming weeks. Note: it takes two - six months to get listed on Google once you submit your site.
