I am not an SEO expert but I know a thing or two about good practices. In talking with some young and upcoming web designers this past week at a user group meeting they asked about SEO and what they could do to help their site rank higher. When I started explaining the basics many of them dropped their jaws at how simple it is to overlook the obvious. I thought this would be a great opportunity to point out some basic SEO tips that web designers at any level can do to make their sites rank higher in search engine results.
Use a descriptive title tag. Every page title should explain what the given page is about in 65 characters or less. The homepage, should start with the sites name followed by additional description to explain what users can find on your site. Pages below the homepage should explain what the content is about first. If you still want the sites name visible include it after the page description. For more on this see point 6 in Jakob Neilsen's article "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design" as he explains it very clearly.
Use the meta description tag. Although many search engines place a low priority on your meta tags, one tag still remains useful. The meta description tag. Craft a well written but short description telling what your site is about. This is used by search engines in search results listings. This too should be very short and to the point.
Keywords in link text. When users and search engines scan your page they are looking for useful trigger words or keywords. When you create a link on your page avoid using the default "Click Here" phrase and instead link text that is relative to the page you are referring.
Markup Order is important. It's no secret that some major search engines will only index your page to a certain point. Placing your content before your sidebar in the markup order will ensure that more of your important information is indexed.
Use proper alt text. Search spiders do not see images so using a good description of your image in the alt text to tell the search engine whet your image is about.
Include a sitemap. In my previous post "Top 20 Most Valuable Websites" I linked to XML-Sitemaps. You can use their service to generate a proper sitemap to upload to your site. Most of the big search engines use this sitemap if it's available to see all the content on your site quickly.
Outside sites with related Information
With some basic enhancements to your site not only will you make your site search engine friendly, but you will also make it more useful to your visitors in the process. It's a win-win situation.