While working on search engine optimization page for the wiki site, I came acrss an article written by Jakob Nielsen back on October 1, 1997 (How Users Read on the Web). I was reminded of how powerful his words were then by the fact that they STILL hold true today.
Jakob wrote, “People rarely read Web pages word by word…”
The same holds true today. Only a very small percentage of what you write on your web page gets read. Back in 1997 the world wide web was tiny compared to today’s internet (Al Gore was still inventing I think). Jakob wrote the following list of suggestions for writing with scannable text:
- highlighted keywords
- meaningful sub-headings
- bulleted lists
- one idea per paragraph
- the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
- half the word count (or less) than conventional writing
All of us are guilty of breaking these simple rules (me too, see www.ZenithExhibits.com) at one point or another, but it helps to be reminded every now and then.
Search engine optimization is the process of improving your site’s position in the natural search results. With hundreds of millions of searcher, each search engine has an invested interest is giving searchers what they are looking for as quickly as possible or in as few searches as possible.
The old web scam was keyword stuffing, also referred to as spamdexing. Webmasters would stuff as many keyword phrases as they could think of in the meta tags just to get top listings.
The search engines become wise to these unethical tactics and changed their website evaluation process. While much of the algorithm used is a closely held trade secret, using public Google documents we can come up with a new priority list for our SEO effort:
- Page title – using your strongest keyword and clear main theme for the page.
- URL name – great url names bring you traffic (BusinessBlogging.net and PortlandBusinessCommunity.com are a couple of examples).
- Page description – in 160 characters or less tell Google (and the world) about your page.
- Heading tags – almost straight from Mr. Neilsen’s list (meaningful sub-headings).
- Bold text – another tip from 1997/
- Links and menu items with keywords – Jakob wrote as “highlighted keywords” but this is the same thing.
- Alt tag text on pictures – Most of us forget these important tags. The image on the picture is NOT searchable, the alt tag IS. Add the tag, tell what is really in the picture and then watch Google Image Search for your picture.
- Keywords
Keywords have been demoted to the bottom of the list and have very little impact on your search listings. Keywords are important in one regards, having them ALONG with good usage in your page text WILL influence more web traffic. The important note, however, is content is king. Throwing keywords on your page in a haphazard fashion will HURT your website. Building quality content that helps your visitor will get you noticed.
…but the above is only part of the story! SEO also requires traffic AND in-bond links. In a future article we will talk more about getting links to your site.
Ed Bejarana
BusinessBlogging.net
a division of Zenith Exhibits, Inc.
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