Top 10 Search Engine Tips

Posted on: October 24th, 2009 by dominicj

Improved Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

The following points are what can be done to optimise website pages using the Miramedia Content Management System (CMS) and improve search engine results for target keywords.

• Firstly decide on a list of keywords for each site – the words that might be typed in a search by the kind of people you are trying to attract to the site.
• Make main headings (“Heading 1” from the “format” dropdown in cms) on each page as descriptive as possible and include your keywords where possible (the words you want to be found by).
• Make sure the ‘meta data’ for description and title (see button at the top of each page when editing a page in the cms) is filled in on every page in the site, this can match the h1 title and additionally include some of those keywords. However don’t go over a limit of say 10 words for title and 15 for the description. These same keywords need to appear in the page content as much as possible.
• Add your keywords to the meta data keywords section, however this is less used by search engines these days, it’s more important to use these words in your links, headings and copy on the page.
• Aim to have a body copy of 250-400 words where possible.
• Use the “Heading 2” and “Heading 3” sub headings with as many target keywords in as possible.
• Use bold to highlight text and phrases here and there, it gets a higher importance than normal text, again dropping in the odd key word.
• Use descriptive links with key words in, rather than ‘click here’. For example “exhibitors showcasing the latest prints, rugs, mirrors, cushions, ceramics and glassware”
• You can use anchor tags with a list of linked subheadings at the top of long pages (like an index). These will be picked up as keyword phrase links too.
• Link to other pages in the site as much as possible. Make the link text match the Heading 1 of the destination page if possible. This is also good for keeping visitors on the site longer as they will not get to the end of the page and reach a dead end. Good links can be used to guide a person round a site as they read.
• Link to external sites where possible and get as many of those sites to link back to you as possible.
• Fill in the ‘description’ for all images in the pages, again using as many of your relevant keywords as possible.

Do the above on all the pages in the site and make updates to the site copy as often as possible, especially the home page. The copy changes need not be big ones.

Although a lot of emphasis is placed on placing keywords around as much as possible, by writing your copy as normal you’ll find the keywords are often naturally there already, it’s just a case of making sure there are links containing them, and the meta titles and description on all the pages.