7 steps to make a site search engine friendly

To promote a site and to obtain that all the pages are indexed by search engines, this handbook is essential.
Because even if a site has complete and interesting contents, it will be invisible on the Web, without an action of indexing on directories, search engines and other sites likely to bring backlinks.

Matt Cutts, in an interview with the magazine USA Today, and following the experience he had with his chiropractor complaining that Google did not bring him visitors, gives some advice to beginners.
For SEO, meta tags, keywords in the page and getting backlinks.
To promote the site, creating a blog to talk about his products.
For site management, using Analytics and the webmaster tools that Google offers for free.
All this is explained in detail in this manual.

SEO can also require a modification of the presentation or the addition of accessories in the page. Note that abusing methods for artificially improving the position of a site (such as a page full of useless keywords) can lead you in the "sandbox".

1. Preparing the pages

Contents

• The pages must contain some text and a maximum of details to describe the contents. The first lines of the text have more importance for the indexing and can be used to make a description for the results of search engines (max. 250 characters).
• The repetition of significant terms improves the indexing.
• Try to move the non significant elements at the end of the page, if possible.
• Make sure all keywords related to the content, with possible synonyms are included in the text, and in the title for the most important.

Presentation

• The title of the page, between the <title> </title> tags, should not be omitted and it must be 80 characters long and significant.
• Titles in the body (H1, H2, etc.) and highlighting by the strong attribute, also gives more weight to the words for search engines.
  If the page does not comprise a title, the contents of the first H1 tag are used to replace it in results of search engines.
• Image when they are originals must have a description in the alt attribute.
• Do not use frames, they will not be even supported in the HTML 5 standard. Use a PHP template instead.
• You can use the template of a Wordpress theme under the GPL license.

Keywords

• Keywords must be placed preferably at the beginning of the text.
• In the title of the page if they relate to the whole of it.
• In the subtitles if they relate to a chapter.
• In filenames. The name of pages (HTML file) is taken into account as well as the anchors of links.
• In the description of internal links.
• In the alt attribute of images.
  
  To know if a keyword is of value, test it here.

Navigation, internal links

• Each page of the site must be accessible from at least one other page.
• The home page should contain a link to the most visited pages on the site.
• Avoid, it is a council from Google, JavaScript navigation.
• Advice on the anchors of external links also apply to internal links.

External links

• The URL, and other references are taken into account, they must contain keywords.
• The words in a filename must be separated by "-" and not glued.
• <a> tags have descriptive text, an anchor, which contains the main keywords on the linked page.

Avoid beginner mistakes

• Avoid hidden texts to artificially fill the page with keyword, that will function one moment, then your site will be dropped in the "sandbox", or the blacklist, in other words it will be excluded from results of search engines, it would then be necessary to change domain name to be indexed again.
• Avoid duplicate content, identical pages on several sites.
• Do not use images for titles or subtitles. Search engine need for the titles and they can read only texts.
• Do not use heading tags to build the layout.
• No need to upload pages near empty: it will hurt the entire site.

2. Title tag

The head section of each page must contain a title tag.

It contains the title of the page, up to 80 characters. This tag is absolutely required.

1. The text can include the domain name of the site for the home page, but it should not be repeated on the other pages.
2. Titles must absolutely be different on each page else page can be badly indexed by engines.
3. Titles must be sentences and not lists of keywords and must reflect the contents of the page.
4. The ideal is that the title gives net surfers desire to read the page, it is useful in the lists of results of search engines.
   For example, according to the experience of a webmaster, adding "Every" in front of "Tools for sale" is sufficient to increase the results.
5. The title of the TITLE tag could be more complete than in the page, because the latter is seen in the context of the site, when the first is seen out of context on results page.

3. Meta tags

The format of a meta tag is as following:

<meta name="" content="">

To name is assigned the name of the meta: "description", "robots, and to content the text or commands.

DESCRIPTION

Description of the page (or of the site). Google displays only 160 characters.
It is especially useful on the home page of the site which will be indexed by directories, like for the pages having little contents and mainly images. In the article "Improve snippets with a meta description makeover", Google advices to write a relevant description that must be unique and not the same on all pages. Example:

<meta name="description" content="The topic of my page" >

ROBOTS

Directives for the search engines, the default is "all":

• index: the page will be indexed.
• noindex: the opposite.
• follow: the dependent pages are taken into account.
• nofollow: the links are ignored by the engine.
• noarchive: the page is not stored in cache but still indexed.
• all: all positive options, the default if the meta is omitted.
• none: all negative options.
• noodp: if the search engine displays a description of your site taken in the Dmoz directory and that it is not appropriate, you can place this directive (ODP, Open Directory Project = Dmoz.org).

FRAGMENT

<meta name="fragment" content="!">

This tag informs search engine that this is an Ajax page et that there is a dynamic content to index (see the Ajax section).

Optional meta tags

These tags do not have any SEO utility, but they can be used for specialized tools:

• AUTHOR: the name of the author.
• REVISIT-AFTER: ignored by search engines and replaced by the XML sitemap.
• LANGUAGE: Obsolete.
• KEYWORDS: Keywords separated by a comma, up to 1000 characters. Useless, this is no longer used by engines.

References

• Google gives the list of meta-tags that you can use (and that it supports).
• The article of Google, meta tags and Web search.

4. Getting backlinks

Back links are essential. There are a number of criteria that are considered to rank pages in results, but  backlinks are the most important because they testify the popularity of the site. On this topic, see the article how to get backlinks. The links from important sites and people have much more value.
Matt Cutt provides a means of increasing its popularity and also add links to its own website: create a blog to talk about his products. Wordpress is a good tool to create your blog.

Directories

Directories are very important and more particularly, Dmoz when a site is launched. Google, Yahoo, Live, MSN, Ask, etc. partly establish their indexing according to this repertory. In addition, many sites take again their contents from the pages of Dmoz or link to its categories.
It is necessary to find the exact category of the site in the tree structure of the directory. The submission of a site is followed be an examination before acceptance, and the site must have certain qualities:

• Complete site and not in the work.
• Substantial contents, and in text (not in flash or images).
• The display of the page should not be too slow.
• The site should not be submitted under several different domain names with redirections.
• The content must be unique. Duplicate content is prohibited by search engines.

To know if your site is indexed on Dmoz.org, type in the search field below your domain name and its extension (without the www), in the form U: scriptol.com:

The time of acceptance after submission in dmoz is variable and can exceed one month.

About other directories, to know which ones have the most visitors, made a request on search engines with two or three key words: those which characterize best your site + the "directory" word. And consider the first pages of results.
Directories associated to important websites, having editorial pages, are more lucky to have visitors.

I tried a referencing campaign (for another site) on a selection of directories supposed to have visitors, and it resulted 1 point of improvement of PageRank, approximately 500 more backlinks (although if submitted the site to 50 directories!) and a negligible improvement of the traffic. Most of the links disappeared with time. However directories are useful for a new site, and some of them give durable backlinks.

Search engines

You can also directly register your site on search engines, without waiting until a repertory accepts them: google.com, yahoo.com, live.com...

The PageRank is the base of the Google engine. It goes from 0 to 10. The highest put you page at top in the list of e answers to a query, once the page has been selected for its relevance. PageRank depends on the number of links towards a page and also outbound links.
A means to know the rank of your site, is to install the Google toolbar on your browser, which display the information when you visit your site.

Mistake to avoid

The registration to a multitude of directories to improve the ranking can create a sudden increase in the number of links towards the site but this has no future. However major directories such as dmoz.org have on the contrary a durable effect.
Avoid also a same description on several directories.

5. Sitemap

Creating a map of your site, and submitting it to Google, Yahoo and Live Search, can improve the indexing of your pages. Moreover you can have a minimal control on the behavior of the robots of the engines.
To create a sitemap file is very tiresome. But there are software which provides scripts with graphic interface and makes it possible to edit it more easily.
A generator of sitemap, Simple Map, with a graphic interface for Windows is provided here.

After at least a month before the Google's update you can check the new popularity of your site with the Webmaster Tools from Google which will displays the number of links pointing to your site.

6. RSS

To add an RSS syndication file at root of your site, which contains the list of the best pages or the last articles or last posts, contributes notably to the promotion of the site and obtainment of backlinks.
For more details and to obtain a free RSS editor, read the article: Promotion of a Web site with RSS.

An RSS feed is not helpful at all sites. It is useful especially to announce news and therefore to merchant sites or sites or news, and not to encyclopedic sites.

7. Publicize

Launching a professional website should be accompanied by an advertising campaign with a service such as Adwords.

Some suppliers of domain names with higher cost propose a free optimization to justify the price. The main part is in page-setting by the exact definition and the insertion of meta tags in your pages.

See 10 ideas to publicize your site instead.

Documents

• SEO glossary.
• 12 rules of optimization to increase the traffic thanks to search engines.
• SEO and PageRank FAQ. Optimizing a website to increase traffic.
• The patent of Google for the calculation of the score of Web pages.
• The interview of Matt Cutts. Quoted at top of this page.
• Webmaster World. Forum of SEO.
• Guidelines from Google for the design of a Web site, in order to improve ranking.
• Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. Guide from Google to optimize a website (PDF).
• Search Engine Optimizers. From Google about SEO techniques.

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