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7 Deadly Sins of Bad Web SEO
August 24, 2010 by seoworks
Filed under SEO Tips & Ideas
Are you guilty of any of these seven deadly sins of Web SEO?
We’ve all heard of the 7 deadly sins of greed, sloth, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and pride but how does this relate back to Web SEO? Good question. In their desperation to increase Search Engine rankings quickly, some companies can be sinful or use black hat or dubious methods to achieve their high rankings or become smug, boastful or complacent about their page #1 ranking. But are these really long-term strategies for success? Read more and find out.
Greed: Paid links or linking to bad neighbourhoods
Greed is never good especially when it comes to link building. It’s best that a natural link building profile is built over time with links to credible and trustworthy websites that are related to your industry. Paying for links may seem like a good idea at the time but you may be linking to bad neighbourhoods or disreputable sites like gambling or pharmaceutical sites. Read more about link authority.
Sloth: No back links
Not having a link building program in place is just pure sloth. In simple terms, a link from a website which is trustworthy, credible and has link authority is seen as a validation of your website by Search Engines. Maintaining a link building campaign should only take a few hours per week but it can pay dividends in increasing your Search Engine ranking and improving your Web SEO. Read more about link building strategies.
Lust: Using black hat SEO techniques
You may be lusting over your competitor’s rankings but taking the easy way out and using black hat techniques to improve your Search Engine rankings is never the answer and not a long term solution. These techniques may include keyword stuffing (see below), cloaking, using link farms or doorway pages on your website. Read more about black hat SEO.
Envy: Eyeing your competitor’s rankings
Envying your competitor’s number one ranking can lead to many hours of unhappiness. However, you can put your envy to good use in Search Engine Optimisation. By analysing your keyword competitor’s on page and off page Web SEO, you can improve the optimisation of your website and your Search Engine position. Read more about competitor analysis.
Gluttony: Keyword stuffing
SEO copywriting is not about keyword density, it is about using keywords throughout the copy in a natural and seamless manner that is unobtrusive to the reader. By spamming your copy with the same keywords, you not only risk offending the reader but you can arouse suspicion with the Search Engines who may not index your page or give it a lower ranking. Read more about Search Engine keywords.
Wrath: Duplicate copy
Not only will you incur the wrath of other websites if you are caught duplicating their copy on your website, Web pages with duplicate copy will not rank as well on a Search Engine. Search Engines prefer content which is original, interesting and updated regularly and not only will your website be ranked higher as a result, it will also serve as excellent link bait. Read more about SEO copywriting.
Pride: No ongoing SEO maintenance
You know what they say – pride comes before a fall. In the context of Search Engine Optimisation, this can only mean one thing – a drop in Search Engine rankings. You may be patting yourself on the back for having a page #1 ranking for important keyword phrases but it’s never a good idea to become complacent. Web SEO requires ongoing effort. Read more about SEO maintenance.
You may be guilty of one or even seven of these deadly sins but there is always time to redeem your ways and save your SEO soul. A good SEO company can get you back on the straight and narrow and show you the best ways to optimise and manage your site for long-term results. Contact us to keep you from the perils of committing these deadly sins and making sure you get the most out of your Web SEO.
Web SEO – How to Improve Your Bounce Rate
June 27, 2010 by seoworks
Filed under SEO Tips & Ideas
Moving web SEO beyond Search Engine rankings to conversion …
Web SEO is not all about your Search Engine rankings. Better positions on a Search Engine usually correlate to better click-through rates which equal more visitors. However, for at least 20% (and sometimes up to 50%) of the visitors on your site, it isn’t the first click you have to worry about … it’s the second that’s a real fight to get. Here are the top 7 tips to maximise the value of your web SEO, reduce your bounce rate and increase your conversion rate.
What is a bounce rate?
Your bounce rate reflects the proportion of people that leave within around 10 seconds of arriving at your site, and is expressed as a percentage of your total number of visitors.
Given that the web is so enormous, and people aren’t always sure what they’re looking for, even the well-established sites with good web SEO practices often have a bounce rate up to 20%.
Bounce rates over 30% are usually cause for concern, and if your bounce rate is over 50% you may need to do a major re- think of your website design, website copy or linking and advertising protocols.
Where are your ‘bounciest’ visitors coming from?
Usability expert Jakob Nielsen identifies 4 separate sources of traffic for the purposes of analysing bounce rates. You’ll want to know which of the following traffic sources contributes most to your bounce rate:
- Web SEO traffic, either from organic results or sponsored listings
- Links from other websites
- Repeat visitors (who may arrive by typing the address into their browser bar or have it bookmarked)
- Digg/Delicious or other low value or social bookmarking traffic
Ideally, your bounce rate from paid and organic web SEO traffic will be the lowest, because users have arrived at your site based on a keyword search that you are optimised for.
Deliver what was promised
The biggest reason why your website is more elastic than a pair of your grandfather’s pants is that the keyword that you are ranking for on Search Engines does not mirror the content on your website. A high bounce rate would indicate your site is not relevant to the search they performed or they judged your site to be of poor quality.
Invasive advertising
Web surfers landing on your website may be turned off by intrusive web advertising that makes the website difficult to navigate and read. While advertising may be a necessary evil for some websites, a web designer needs to achieve a workable balance between the level of advertising on the site and usability of the website to improve your web seo.
Take off your autoplay videos and music
Often, companies love autoplay videos and music; they feel it adds to the ‘experience’ of the site. However, this can be quite annoying to a new visitor to your site. If you’re able to set your bounce rate analysis parameters, check how many users leave within three seconds of the time it takes your music or video to load. This will tell you if they’re the culprit behind your springy site.
Give your visitors 5-7 choices
Put the most popular links and call to action buttons on your site in the ‘best real estate’ of your pages. The location, location, location rule of web pages is that close to the top and towards the left of the screen is better. Consult with your web SEO experts to determine if your site structure and home page design is ’scaring’ visitors away. Too few choices and people see no value; too many choices and they feel paralysed.
Check your page load time
If the average user has to wait longer than 10 seconds for most elements of your page to load, there’s a chance they’ll either assume something is wrong with the site, or simply get impatient and leave. This is not to say that you can’t have an engaging site – just make sure this doesn’t affect the user’s experience. Site loading time is now one of the signals Google uses to determine your Search Engine ranking.
De-corporatise
Most people that constitute ‘target audiences’ on the net don’t think in corporate speak. If your site is filled with headlines like “Key considerations for deploying integrated collaborations successfully”, you’ll need to cut them down. The most successful headlines are 5-7 words long … do you notice a pattern? You need to speak to your target audience in a language they understand.
Consider a redesign
If the simpler tricks to reduce your bounce rate fail to make an impact, you should consider redesigning your site. A redesign with a focus on usability and simplicity has been known to reduce bounce rates by a massive 25% or more. Ensure when you re-design that you follow best practices such a testing for usability, designing with web SEO in mind, and targeting a specific demographic.
There are a lot of factors that can affect your bounce rate. Sometimes you are simply too close to, and too familiar with your own site to be able to judge where improvements need to be made. If your bounce rate is persistently high despite your adherence to best practices, there is help available. Contact us – a full-service SEO Works expert can help you fight for, and win, that second click and improve your web SEO.
10 SEO Myths Debunked
June 6, 2010 by seoworks
Filed under SEO Tips & Ideas
SEO Works is here to dispel some of the common SEO myths and misconceptions to help you focus your Search Engine Optimisation efforts.
The Search Engine Optimisation industry has long suffered a public relations problem and is rife with SEO myths and misconceptions, not helped by companies who practice black hat SEO techniques to artificially boost your Search Engine ranking. However professional SEO is an important and necessary part of your marketing strategy so how do you tell a snake oil salesman from a bona fide SEO expert? We debunk 10 common SEO myths and misconceptions and help you separate fact from fiction.
SEO is a dirty word: One of the most widespread SEO myths is that it is shrouded in mystery and beyond the realm of marketing experts. Search Engine Optimisation is not rocket science but like any other good business decision, hiring an SEO company is about delegating SEO of your website to an SEO expert who has the time, knowledge and resources to pull off a successful SEO campaign and is solely focused on the optimisation of your website.
SEO can guarantee rankings: This is one of the biggest SEO myths perpetuated by unscrupulous SEO companies in the industry. SEO rankings cannot be guaranteed because your ranking is dependent on Search Engines algorithm changes, what your competitors are doing and countless other ranking factors. SEO is a profession like being a lawyer or accountant. They can’t guarantee their services to keep you out of jail or a humongous tax return so why would you expect it from an SEO company?
Keyword density is very important: Your primary keyword should be used in your on page elements such as your title tag, heading tags and body text. However, SEO has evolved and Search Engines have become more sophisticated. Using modifiers, synonyms and both the plural and singular versions of a keyword is a more natural way of copywriting and casting your net wider for related keywords.
Meta tags have no relevance: The keywords used in your title tag, description tag and keyword meta tags should reflect the content on the Web page and assist Search Engines in understand the content on the page and thus ranking it for relevant keyword searches. Google has openly said they do not use meta keyword tags in their ranking algorithms. However, Google is not the only Search Engine in existence and other Search Engines still use this tag.
Linking out to relevant sites helps with your SEO: This is one of the prevalent SEO myths. Your website linking to quality and authoritative web sites helps rankings. Not true. Your link profile will look unnatural if you are not linking to any sites at all but linking to other sites will not boost your Search Engine visibility. Websites linking back to your website is what you are aiming for and this will increase your ranking.
Web Designers are SEO experts: While your Web designer can certainly provide you with some guidance in regards to optimising your website, SEO is a specialised field and they may not have the knowledge and expertise to achieve top rankings for competitive phrases. However, it is important your Web designer work alongside an SEO expert to build a website with a Search Engine friendly infrastructure.
Flash is a no go for SEO: Search Engines have become a lot better at crawling and indexing websites that use Flash. However, most SEO companies still recommend having an HTML-style navigation and content template which will allow you to have the best of both worlds. With creating a website in one single flash movie, there is an absence of text and crawlable links which can create problems in Search Engine spiders reading the file.
Getting on the first page of Google will guarantee your success: Remember the end goal of SEO is conversion. There is no point ranking on page number of Google for an niche keyword that will just drive traffic to your website but will not result in increased enquiries and revenue. Keep your eye on the prize and target your pages for keywords that will drive better targeted, quality traffic to your website.
If you build it, they will come: Certainly having a great product, an engaging website and interesting copywriting is all very important but people have to find you on Search Engines first. Optimising your website is equally as important to ensure that your website ranks highly on Web searches for relevant keywords. Research shows that most Web surfers do not look beyond the first pages of Search Engine results.
SEO is a one time activity: One of the most common SEO myths or traps a company can fall for is that optimisation of your website is a one off activity. Search Engine Optimisation is not a ‘set it and forget it’ marketing activity. Whether you employ an SEO company or continue optimising your website in-house, it requires ongoing maintenance such as:
- keyword research
- page editing and optimisation
- link building strategies and
- website and competitive analysis
Find out more about our SEO Growth Plans and SEO Maintenance Plans to maintain your online growth and increase your online presence.
Contact us to find out more about our SEO Packages and SEO Services and find out why we are one of the best SEO companies in Australia. There are a lot of SEO myths and misconceptions but at SEO Works, our business analysts are encouraged to have an open door policy and share their knowledge and expertise with you to help demystify the world of Search Engine Optimisation.
Five WordPress Essentials – Hosting and Installing WordPress
May 24, 2010 by seoworks
Filed under SEO Tips & Ideas
If you are looking to use WordPress as an SEO friendly platform, here are the five WordPress essentials of hosting and setting up WordPress that you should consider first…
We’ve written before about how using the WordPress (WP) blog platform is a great SEO strategy but we’re going to dig deeper now and bring you what we think are five WordPress essentials in terms of hosting packages, themes and plugins. WordPress has a Search Engine-friendly infrastructure, great design templates and plugins available (to increase the functionality of your website) and an easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS). Find out more …
Five WordPress essentials: Recommended web hosting packages
To maximise the SEO benefits of WordPress, we recommend that you host your WordPress blog on your own domain with a hosting package. Domain names often come free with the hosting package. WordPress works best when it’s in a rich hosting environment.
WordPress can be installed from within the control panel for many hosting services – the following are five that are the best at supporting WordPress enabling its full potential and are recommend by WP:
Bluehost: Auto-installation of WordPress, unlimited disk storage, monthly data transfer and host unlimited domains on 1 account, 1 free domain name, 2500 POP / WebMail addresses, 50 MySQL, 99% uptime guarantee and no hidden fees. Voted best support in 2004 – 2008;
DreamHost: WordPress auto-installation and upgrade, 1 TB disk storage, 10 TB bandwidth, free domain, unlimited databases, 3000 email accounts, unlimited domain forwarding and much more;
MediaTemple: WordPress one-click installer and enough high-speed storage and bandwidth to run a blogging empire.
GoDaddy: Hosting plans include to unlimited disk space, unlimited transfer, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited websites, and 1,000 email accounts and plans start at just US$4.25/month.
Laughing Squid: Hosting plans come in three packages; Mega Squid, Ultra Squid and Super Squid. The daddy of the plans, Super Squid offers 4 GB disk space, 200 GB bandwidth, 5 MySQL databases, 50 email accounts.
Find out more about these hosting companies recommended by WordPress.
These hosting packages are all based in the US. However, if you are trying to attract the local market, you may want to find a locally based service provider as geographical location of the hosting is an important factor.
Many WordPress hosting packages offer shared hosting however this can be a trap – these usually come with too few databases and restrict the number of domain names allowed. Developer support should be a key focus when choosing web hosting.
Five WordPress essentials: Best themes for WordPress blogs*
If you are setting up a blog or a personal website, you may only wish to install a free WordPress theme to get you started. Some themes can be customised by adding different widgets and WP plugins.
You can also edit the template files, image files, style sheets, custom pages as well as any necessary code files to change the look and feel of your website to reflect your company’s branding or your personal style. Some WP themes also have advertising built into the theme.
WordPress offers over 1000 free themes from children’s themes, business themes and fun fashionable themes. Five of the most popular WordPress themes include*:
| Theme | Description |
| Mystique: Feature-packed theme with a solid design, built-in widgets and a intuitive theme settings interface. | |
| Arjuna X: Translation ready, SEO focused, IE6-8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera compatibility, support for threaded comments, four widget bars, flexible sidebar, and more. | |
| intrepidity: Highly SEO optimised and marketing driven theme with a fully customisable design. Theme options include custom header, footer and background images, logo uploader, custom home page, social networking integration and more. | |
| eDegree°: Highly SEO optimized and fully customisable designs.. Theme options include custom header, footer and background images, logo uploader, custom home page content, social networking integration and more. | |
| Motion: Dark and colourful theme with sweet transparency characteristics. Drop-down categories menu, 2-column layout and widget-ready footer and sidebar. |
Five WordPress essentials: Must-have WordPress plugins**
Plugins are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress and are designed by third party developers. When installing WordPress on a new site, there are five plugins you can’t do without. These include the following:
All in One SEO Pack: This generates Meta tags automatically, automatically optimises your titles for Search Engines, create canonical URLs and fine tunes navigational links.
Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress: This creates an XML-sitemap of the blog that is supported not only by Google but also by Ask.com, YAHOO and MSN Search. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs.
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator: This is another sitemap plugin that creates a user sitemap on your website.. This plugin is highly customisable from its own options page in the WordPress admin panel.
MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer: When you create a new post, your blog will ping and notify all the ping services that it has been updated. This encourages Search Engines and different blog directories/services to index your updated blog properly.
Redirection: This is an essential WordPress plugin that manages 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have.
You can find other useful plugins at the WordPress Plugin Directory. You may also want to read our article on WordPress SEO – Ten Useful Plugins.
Five WordPress Essentials: WordPress copywriting tips to optimise your website
Search Engines have a preference for websites that are updated regularly with fresh content. Ways to do this are to create a company blog, add media releases, case studies and testimonials to the website and update the website with competitions and special offers.
The easy-to-use WordPress CMS makes it easy for you to add and edit copy on your website. Here are five SEO copywriting tips to take advantage of the SEO features included with the WordPress platform.
Permalinks: Create an SEO friendly permalink. Make the link your title minus the stop words (and, the, if, etc) with dashes (not underscores) between each word.
Title tags: Use your keyword in the post title. Important keywords should be used towards the start of the title tag as it has greater SEO value. 5 – 8 words are best.
Meta description tag: A meta description tag is a guide for Search Engines to use as summary text (beneath the title) when a site is listed in the Search Engines. Word counts should be aimed at 25-27 words and less than 165 characters in total.
Page headings: Make sure that your primary keyword or keyword phrase is included ideally at the start of the H1 heading. Use H2-H5 headings to optimise for secondary terms – make sure these are used as sub-headings.
Body copy: Insert keywords naturally and seamlessly into the text. Use your primary keyword as well as synonyms throughout the copy.
Contact us and find out more about how we can develop a beautiful WP website or blog that not only fulfils your design brief but will also delivers on the SEO goals for your website, drives quality traffic to your website and improves your conversion rates. WordPress was designed with SEO specifically in mind but with these WordPress essentials, you will be able to further customise your WordPress website or blog, enhance the functionality and improve the SEO.
*As of 25 May 2010
*Disclaimer: Please note that we have not tested all these WordPress themes and plugins. Before you install a plugin, make sure you read all the documentation, make notes of any changes to WordPress files or templates and remember to backup your database and files.
SEO Friendly CMS – Ten Things to Look For
May 18, 2010 by seoworks
Filed under SEO Tips & Ideas
A SEO friendly CMS is seen by some SEO experts as the be all and end all and crucial to the optimisation of your website.
If you are looking to update your website content more than once a month then it is likely that you will require a content management system and choosing an SEO friendly CMS isn’t always an easy task if you don’t know what to look for.
Let us walk you through the essentials to help you select a CMS that is going to give you all the editorial functions you need while optimising your website and enhancing your Search Engine visibility in the process.
Here are 10 things to consider when selecting your SEO friendly Content Management System(CMS):
Keyword rich URLs: An SEO friendly CMS should include custom URL creation. An automatically generated and dynamic URL may look like this http://www.mysite.com.au/blog-articles/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date but an SEO friendly CMS will allow you to create a keyword rich, static URL such as http://www.mysite.com.au/blog-articles/seo-friendly-cms. Static URLs are easier for both Search Engine spiders and the end-user to understand what the page is about.
Title tag customisation: Each title tag must be able to be edited or customised on a page by page basis. It can be helpful to also create rules so that all pages end in “mysite.com.au” or “mysiteblog.com.au” depending on the page.
Meta Tag customisation: Meta description and robots tags must be editable via the CMS for it to be considered SEO friendly. The meta description is a guide for Search Engines to use as an accurate summary of a page’s content which (beneath the title) when a website is listed in the Search Engines results.
Custom HTML tags enabling: A Search Engine-friendly CMS should offer the function of putting <hx> tags or “nofollow” tags on links. These features can be built into the menu or allowed through manual editing of the HTML in a text editor window.
Anchor text editing: Optimisation of the internal linking anchor text is critical for your SEO. An SEO friendly CMS will allow you to customise the anchor text of all internal links.
Sensible site structure: Poor category or site structure can be a killer for your sites performance in the Search Engines. When designing your sites architecture, there shouldn’t be any limits on your structure based on your CMS’s inflexibility. A good content management system will offer customisable navigation.
301-redirects: An SEO Friendly CMS should allow the proper re-direction of content where necessary. 301’s are a valuable asset when new page versions are created, content expires or you are moving to a whole new website.
RSS / XML: The ability to add an RSS feed to your website can boost site optimisation efforts whether it’s feeding off your website content or refreshing content on your website from another source. Just like HTML web pages, with a SEO friendly CMS, RSS feeds can be optimised to perform better in Search Engine listings.
Image handling and ALT tags: Search Engines cannot read images so all images should be optimised and alt tags are a must have from a SEO perspective. The alt tags serve as the anchor text and allow you to add keyword-rich text. Google Images is starting to be a large referrer of traffic to websites so image SEO should not be neglected.
Ability to access all areas: A Search Engine friendly CMS will allow you to edit all parts of the website including the footer and sidebars and allow you add cross-link paragraphs. Be wary of content management systems that say they automatically do that for you.
Contact us to find out about what CMS we recommend and how we can help you implement the system on your new or redesigned website. Choosing the right CMS allows you to easily add, edit and delete content on your website, add extra plugins to enhance the design and functionality and allow basic optimisation of your website without having to be an SEO expert. Choosing a SEO friendly CMS is one of the most important decisions of your design process and can make or break the Search Engine Optimisation of your website.
Best SEO Toolbar Reviews
April 16, 2010 by seoworks
Filed under SEO News & Views, SEO Videos
There are many different SEO toolbars available to download for your browser, our two favourites are covered in this best SEO toolbar reviews…
Here is a rundown and quick best SEO toolbar reviews of two of our favourite toolbars; the SEO Toolbar from SEOMoz and SEO Toolbar from SEO Book. An SEO toolbar gives you important SEO resources at your fingertips to optimise your website and analyse your competitor’s websites. Features of popular SEO toolbars include easy access to keyword research tools, on page analysis tools, popular SEO forums and tools to check dofollow links and page rank.
SEO Toolbar from SEOmoz (previously known as the Mozbar)
The SEOmoz toolbar for Firefox was chosen as part of our best SEO toolbar reviews article because it is a free download and provides easy access to some of the most powerful SEO tools and data while you surf the Web. Features include:
SEOmoz tools and resources: easy access to SEOmoz tools such as Trifecta, Keyword Difficulty, Linkscape, and even Open Site Explorer.
Page Elements tab: on page SEO analysis including title tag, meta description and header tags.
Page Attributes tab: shows everything from meta robots and rel=”canonical” usage, to page load time, on–page link information and http status codes.
Link Data tab: provides quick access to Linkscape metrics and the latest version includes new metrics such as Page Authority & Domain Authority, SERP overlay with detailed link metrics.
SERP Overlay: this feature lets you evaluate the link profiles of all of the pages in a Search Engine result page.
No follow links: simple highlighting of no-followed links.
View a simple tutorial for the SEOmoz tool bar or read more about the toolbar on SEOmoz’ website.
SEO Toolbar from SEO Book
The SEO Toolbar from SEO Book was chosen as part of our best SEO toolbar reviews article because it gives you easy access to SEO resources and market research tools to analyse your competitor’s websites. It is a free download and is seamlessly integrated with your Firefox browser. Features include:
Link information: This gives you valuable information about how many external links are pointing to a particular domain. With this feature, you can also search directory listings (Yahoo, Dmoz and BOTW), page rank and site age.
Advanced information button: With this feature you can access background information and export data like:
- site links;
- page links;
- directory listings;
- traffic estimates;
- social media information from popular social bookmarking and social news sites.
With the Compare websites feature, you can do a competitive analysis of up to five websites. You can also quickly check nofollow links, the IP address of the website and see who runs the website. There are also links to competitive research tools amongst other things.
Rank checker: The popular SEO Book Firefox plugin has been built into the SEO toolbar for added convenience. This does exactly what it says and allows you to check your rankings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing search results.
SEO X-ray: One of the most useful tools is the SEO X-ray which puts a pop-over of all the meta data. This allows you to look at things like on page headings, internal links, external links, and gives you access to the keyword density analysis tool.
Keyword Research Tools: This tool allows you to create tabs with your favourite keyword research tools such as Google search based keyword tool, Adwords Keyword Tool, Wordtracker Free Keywords and so forth.
Built in Feed Reader: SEO is a dynamic industry so it’s important to keep abreast of changes in the industry. This feature is populated with a list of great SEO blogs and allows you to bookmark your favourite blogs.
View a simple tutorial for the SEO Toolbar (emailed to get embed code for video on their website) or read more about the toolbar on SEO Book’s website.
Contact us if you are thinking about taking your SEO activities a step further and we can discuss our competitive SEO Packages and SEO Services with you in more detail. Give yourself a marketing advantage and install an SEO toolbar so you can keep a close eye on your competitors as well as the optimisation of your own website. There are a lot of SEO toolbars available but we have found the SEO Toolbar from SEOMoz and SEO Toolbar from SEO Book to be the most user-friendly and useful in our best SEO toolbar reviews.
Filenames – Tips on Naming Your Web Pages
April 12, 2010 by seoworks
Filed under SEO Tips & Ideas
Name your web pages with care as filenames play an important role in the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and navigation structure of your website.
Filenames are an important part of building an SEO-friendly technical infrastructure. A good filename also makes it easier for your visitors to navigate your website, share links with other websites and for developers to organise the file structure of your website. Here are seven tips on how to choose good filenames for your web pages.
Use a descriptive title: A filename like www.mysite.com.au/blog-articles/search-engine-optimisation-tips is a good example of a filename whereas www.mysite.com.au/blog-articles/0343300888 may not work as well. Search Engine spiders and visitors alike will be able to get a sense of what your page is about simply by the name.
Keywords: Use keywords in your filenames which reflect the on page elements. Remember that keywords used in your page title, headings, description and copy must all have SEO consistency so the Search Engines understand what your page is about and determine relevance in their search results.
Use short filenames: While filenames should be descriptive, shorter filenames are better for link building strategies and are more memorable. Social media websites like Twitter or forums automatically shorten long URLs. To shorten the URL, omit stop words such “a”, “an”, “the”, “to”, “on”, “from” etc when creating a web page.
Dashes: Hyphens should be used in your filenames to separate words as hyphens are read by the Search Engines as spaces. Do not use underscores as a word separator as Search Engines see an underscore as another letter of the alphabet. This should be standard practice when naming files whether you are saving images, PDF or word documents that will appear on your website.
Avoid the use of special characters: Try and limit the characters in your filename to lowercase letters a to z, numbers and underscores. Try and avoid the use of special characters such as exclamation marks, ampersand, asterisks and percentage marks when naming web pages.
Avoid spaces: While this may seem obvious, this is a common mistake made by beginners. Some Content Management Systems (CMS) may replace a space with with the encoded “%20″ form so you may not be aware that you had a space in your filename. Just double check your filenames are correct before pressing the save button.
Use lowercase: It is good practice to always put web names in lower case. Your operating system may see upper and lower case file name as the same but your web server operating system or unix-based systems like Linux and FreeBSD may consider them to be two different files.
Good filenames are easy to remember, make sense within the entire hierarchy of the site and contribute to the Search Engine Optimisation of your website. Contact us to find out we can help you develop a website with a Search Engine friendly technical infrastructure. We can give you advice on how to create web pages, recommendations on navigation and on page elements right through to the website design and copywriting to not only drive traffic to your website but maximise your online revenue.
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation for Childcare Management Consultancy
October 7, 2009 by seoworks
Filed under Client Profiles
Guardian Childcare Alliance provides child care centre management services to dozens of childcare centre owners throughout Australia.
If you are in the childcare industry, then you too can benefit from turning up on the 1st page of Google for your targeted keywords such as “Sydney childcare centres” or “day care Melbourne”, like this page did for your search…and just like Guardian Childcare Alliance does for their keywords. Contact SEO Works to discover how we can help you to gain more leads, conversions & revenues with our SEO Services for your website.
Thanks to their systems, methodology and track record, Guardian Childcare Alliance has built over the years a reputation as one of the best childcare centre management companies in Australia.
Incorporating a team of childcare centre consultants and specialists, Guardian assists current centre owners and prospective childcare developers alike by providing child care management and regulatory advice. Our management team also offers services such as demand analytics, feasibility studies, regulations, assessments and compliances. We also have in-depth experience with assisting non-profit organisations and parent committees with kindergarten management services.
Our goals are to deliver best practice child care; to free some of the centre manager’s time and to maximise his/hers efficiency; our childcare centre services may therefore include payrolls, day-to-day management, activity program design and human resources selection.
In Australia today, more than 40 day care centres use some or all of our services making us one of the best child care centre management companies around.
Guardian Childcare Alliance furthermore specialises in offering the highest level of assistance in:
Finally, our high level of expertise allows us to guide and assist prospective childcare centre developers and not-for-profit organisations willing to build a new child care centre.
Guardian Childcare Alliance recognises that every centre has unique needs in meeting community and investor expectations; and it is our aim to exceed these expectations at every opportunity.
SEO Works is proud to deliver SEO Services to Guardian Childcare Alliance, assisting them to raise their online profile & present a clear and dynamic web image.
With centres all across Australia, you can be sure that Guardian Childcare Alliance has the right child care management experience and skills to bring your centre to the forefront of your community.
