Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
By: Brad Einarsen
June 26, 2007
HKS has deep knowledge of current Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices as they relate to the construction and optimization of a site's pages. HKS does not handle search engine marketing by optimizing external factors such as 3rd party links or Adwords accounts.
Our current recommendations for a well-constructed site follow. The items are listed in order of estimated relevance to the search engines.
Overall Philosophy
The overarching philosophy of Google, and presumably all search engines, is that they index only what people see and is relevant. If you keep your SEO tactics to items on the screen that are visible to users and you write them in a way that is clear and forthright you will likely do well.
Inbound External Link Quality
One of the catch-22 issues with SEO is that the factor believed to be the number one determinant of site ranking, external inbound links, is not directly controlled by the site owner.
There are still many ways to accumulate high quality inbound links, but you have to work over a long period of time to get them. The quality of links depends on the perceived quality of the source site. If IBM links to you, that is very good, if HKS links to you it's average, and if a spam site links to you it is either bad or neutral.
There are many more than the sites listed below, but these are a good starting point.
Directories
- DMOZ – The Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org/)
- Yahoo! (http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/suggest/suggest-01.html)
- Gimpsy – task-oriented search (http://www.gimpsy.com/gimpsy/searcher/suggest.php)
- Jayde (http://jayde.com/)
Press Release Distributors
- I-Newswire (http://www.i-newswire.com/)
- PR Leap (http://www.prleap.com/)
Corporate Hubs
These sites will vary by industry. Think about which places you have found industry information and then investigate to see if they allow for links from a directory or list.
Unique Title Tags with Keywords before Corporate Name
The title tag enjoys a very strong agreement from SEO experts as a strong tool to help with rankings. Page titles are also critical when users review their history list:
Good page titles remind users where they have been and are not simply a wall of “Haven Knowledge Systems” all the way down the page.
Order of Text
It is also important to put the important information first in the title. This helps for showing its importance but also, and more importantly, it ensures that the user can see it on the left side of the history list since these lists are narrow and they normally cut off the text to the right.
Use of Structural Tags
HTML Structure Tags (H1, H2, P, UL, etc.)
Some SEO experts believe that these structural tags have a strong influence on how search engine's parse (see) your documents. Even if they don't it is still good form to tag information using its correct element.
A top-level heading should be H1, second levels H2, paragraphs P, etc. This will ensure that maintenance in the future will be easier, it makes the CSS file easier to edit, and will allow for any changes in search algorithms in the future since it is expected that they will continually develop toward stricter interpretations of standards.
Alt Tags
Images are not indexed by search engines so it is critical to supply Alt tags for any headings that are handled in images. Other images need Alt tags to reinforce search engine keywords and also to help blind visitors using screen readers to navigate your site.
Keywords in the Domain, Directories, and File Names
Our feeling at HKS is that these terms are all bolded in Google, so there is a good chance that the terms are indexed. If that is the case then theoretically more will be better. That said, just because Google bolds something, that does not mean that it indexes it or uses it to help rank. It is common belief that Google does not index the “description” meta tag, yet it uses that description when showing a page in the listings.
The items we have seen “noticed” by Google are:
- Title Text
- Page description text
- URL, including directory and file name
Outbound External Link Quality
Unlike inbound links, outbound links are under the site owner's control. These links are much less important than the inbound links, but every little bit helps. A page of links to professional associations, industry standards, and relevant portals is thought to provide some boost in the trust for the entire site.
Also, by having a place to put outbound links it makes it easy for you to trade links with other players in your industry so it seems like a good design philosophy.
Internal Link Quality
The links between your different pages are both under your control and understood to be important for the search engines to discover your site's structure.
Ensure your links are simple HTML anchor tags (link text) and they do not depend on JavaScript for best results.
Sample Site
As an example, the site Colt Engineering uses link best practices and we can see that Google has indexed 87 topical pages from the site on the right.
If we review how the main navigation (HTML pull-down menus) is coded we see that simple links are being used:
Domain, Document, and Link Age
Age of domains, documents, and links seems to improve rankings. There is no way to speed up this process, it is simply the existence of a domain and a set of pages over time.
This factor means that it may be unwise to completely restructure a site that is showing well in the search engines because the change in the directory and page naming structures can cause a reduction in search engine placements.
That said, a site that is performing poorly won't do any worse, and restructuring to use good directory and page names with keywords embedded can improve SEO results, so that activity can still be useful.
Use of Description and Keywords Meta Tags
The "old-school" method of driving SEO results was to ensure quality keywords and description tags on your pages. It is universally agreed that these really do not do anything in Google or the other large search engines any more because so many sites practiced “keyword stuffing” tactics to try and get higher results.
Having said that, the description is still useful for providing a controlled introduction to your website in Google's results. So, while it won't help you in the index, it will help your click through rate (CTR) when web visitors do find you on Google.
More Resources
- More free press release sites from Evan Carmichael's press release tutorial
- Google Webmaster Guidelines
- Google Webmaster Central
- Search Google for “search engine optimization” – you would think that the best players in the business would be able to get their own sites at the top of the listings, however, the cobbler's children have no shoes...
