How to Optimize your site for search engines
“With over 80% of Internet sessions starting with a search, you should be looking for ways to develop traffic from search engines.The high demand for search exists, and is growing, because people can now obtain in mere seconds information that 20 years ago would have required a trip to the library, the use of a card catalog and a foot search through halls of printed volumes; a process that could easily have consumed three hours or more. Through the new channel of search, people can also conduct many of their shopping, banking, and social transactions online, something that has changed the way our global population lives and interacts. Thus it is imperative to learn how to optimize your site for search engines.
- Structural coding issues
- Usability
- Reducing bounce rates (through creating compelling content)
- Fixing indexing issues, and a wide range of issues we shall look at shortly
a) Optimize Your Site Map and Robot.txt File
- A site map, normally in XML format, is the treasure map search engines use to index your website. Without an XML sitemap, search engine spiders have to crawl (read) pages individually, something they don’t like. A site map makes crawling your pages lightning fast.
- A robot.txt file, on the other hand, is simply a file that lets
search engine spiders know not to index specific pages on your site.
While it may seem contrary to the aim of search engine optimization, a
robot.txt comes in very handy when you do not want Google to index
specific information that may affect your rank.
b) Clean Code and Easy Navigation & Page load speed
- Google as the main search engine is very user driven. Normally about 40-47% of internet users expect pages to load in 2-3 second, if it takes longer, they will bounce off.
- Other than optimized and compressed media, your website structure, code, and navigation also determine your page load speed. Thus, your website should have clean, search and user-friendly code, and navigation; this will ensure users stay longer on your site, which Google will treat as a sign of trust and usefulness.
c) Fix Errors and Redirects
- As part of your site-wide optimization, search and fix all error 404s, 301 redirects, and other server related issues. Note: Although most errors will not cost you ranking juice, they will leave a bad taste in user’s mouths, and will increase your bounce rate, something Google uses as a user-friendliness metric.
d) Eliminate Duplicate Content
- Search for, and eliminate all duplicate content on your page. If you absolutely must have duplicate content, use the canonical tag to let Google bots know the nature of this content, and the piece of content or page they index.
e) Utilize Static Pages
- If your site has many dynamic pages, especially ones that contain duplicate content, consider converting your content into static pages. Additionally, if your homepage content constantly changes, consider using a static homepage, and then using this page to point to other locations on your site. This is especially useful considering that an index page with content that changes constantly has a negative SEO effect.
f) Capitalize On Analytics
Analytics allow you to know where your users are coming from, where they are going once they get to your site, and how long they are staying on your site. Analytics play a very huge part in SEO and it is thus a very important SEO must do. Fortunately, Google analytics is very easy to set up on all websites.The Main Mission of Search Engines and what web site publishers need to know.
Since web searchers are free to use any of the many available search engines on the Web to find what they are seeking, the burden is on the search engines to develop a relevant, fast, and fresh search experience. For the most part, search engines accomplish this by being perceived as having the most relevant results and delivering them the fastest, as users will go to the search engine they think will get them the answers they want in the least amount of time.As a result, search engines invest a tremendous amount of time, energy, and capital in improving their relevance. This includes performing extensive studies of user responses to their search results, comparing their results against those of other search engines, conducting eye-tracking studies and constructing PR and marketing campaigns.
Search engines generate revenue primarily through paid advertising. The great majority of this revenue comes from a pay-per-click (or cost-per-click) model, in which the advertisers pay only for users who click on their ads. Because the search engines’ success depends so greatly on the relevance of their search results, manipulations of search engine rankings that result in nonrelevant results (generally referred to as spam) are dealt with very seriously. Each major search engine employs a team of people who focus solely on finding and eliminating spam from their search results. This matters to SEO practitioners because they need to be careful that the tactics they employ will not be seen as spamming efforts by the search engines, as this would carry the risk of resulting in penalties for the websites they work on.
Search engines invest significant resources into understanding how people use search, enabling them to produce better (i.e., faster, fresher, and more relevant) search engine results. For website publishers, the information regarding how people use search can be used to help improve the usability of a site as well as search engine compatibility.