The purpose of this post is to let you identify if you website is optimized for search engines. Search engines will drive targeted traffic to a website that is optimized for the right keyword. This in turn can help you drive sales if you are able to properly convert this traffic that lands on your website. Therefore an optimized website is a must for any business that wants to leverage the internet for their growth.
All search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo depends on certain data they receive from your website to help them display your website when people search for information which exists on your website. Websites are built on structural data called HTML and these HTML codes are translated at the backend by search engines to properly identify what a website page is all about. A search engine in interpreting website page information will look at the following aspect of a website and draw some conclusion from it. Therefore having your Keywords in this portion of the makes the difference between a website that is optimized for search engines or not.
The first place a search engines will look at is the placement of keywords in:
Keywords in Title tag:
The Title tag structure look some like this from the coding portion of a website
<Title> Hosting | Cheap Affordable Hosting Package <Title/>
The data from the Title tag is what you see normally at the top of a web browser. Here is a screen shot of a website that has been optimized and one that has not.
Once a search engine sees this, it interprets the webpage as containing information about hosting and expecting to see information about hosting.
The Title tag carries the highest weight when it comes to search engine optimization because it usually contains the keyword a website is trying to rank for. This is why it is highly recommended that you spend enough time researching the keywords for your website.
After interpreting the Title of a webpage, the search engine will look at other portion the website to see if the same keyword or synonyms of the keyword is repeated.
Does your Header tags contains the same keyword
A website page will contain different header (H) tag ranging from H1 to H6. Header tags are prominent sections of your website and they help to divide the content of your web pages into structures that both the machine and humans can read. The header tags where structured based on how people read magazine and books. You have a prominent section after your main heading and then have mini sections supporting both your headlines and other heading before them.
In using the header tags, the H1 tag is the most important Header tag and you want to make sure that it contains the Keyword you ranking for.
A H1 tag from the example above is seen below:
<H1>Why Affordable Hosting is Good for you</H1>
Are Images named with your Keyword?
A thousand words can be expressed in one image. Images make your website visually appealing but unfortunately search engines are machine and cannot interpret graphics images or video. Therefore in optimizing a webpage, you need to find a way to describe what the graphic on your webpage all about by either is including a text around the graphics or simply giving a name to your image.
If I have a webpage that is optimized for medical supply, I will would help the browser and search engines further understand what my image is all about by using the word “medical supply “ when naming one of my images.
Important: Although it is easy to name images for search engine purpose, it is equally important to use appropriate and relevant images. You would not want to “piss” your human visitors off. Would you?
Content
Once you have your keyword in the Title tag of your web pages, then the body of the web page should contain information very relevant to what you have in your title. One mistake people make is to keep repeating their keyword in the body of the webpages. There is a thin line between writing your website copy for search engines and users or just writing for search engines alone. It is your users who will determine if what they are reading is relevant to the pages or not. If your web copy is not well written, you will have people “bounce” away from your site. This may send a signal to search engines that people do not really find your content relevant to the keyword and therefore might reduce how frequent they show your website for keywords in your title tag. It is always recommended that you write first with your audience in mind. If you do, you will naturally weave your keyword into your web copy.
The title tag is the most important part of a web page that you should pay attention to when seeking to understand if a website has been optimized for a search engines or not. The title tag should contain the keyword a website is ranking for and not some generic phrases that does not relate with the content of the web pages.
Now that you know what an optimized web page looks like, pair up your site against one of your competitors and see if you can identify why you outranking them.
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