How to Create a Web Page that will Rank Well in the Search Engines

Too often the focus of web weavers is on how to create a web page that looks good or functions well. Many don't think much about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to get the pages to actually appear in search results.

I've listed a few mistakes people usually make when learning how to make a web page:

Common Mistakes:
1. No 'Robots.txt' file.
2. Bad use of Page Title tag
3. Not using H1 tags.
4. No Site Map
5. Not adhering to standards suggested by the W3C.

And here are some actions that you can take to improve your ranking in search engines:

Positive Steps:
1. Use descriptive title tags on links as well as images.
2. Internal linking for increased Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
3. Making Key words Internal links
4. Enter your site in DMOZ and other online directories
5. Use Social Networking sites to promote your site

These topics will be covered in more detail in future posts. So stay tuned to 'Weaver's Digest'.

*Editor's Note: 'Peace on Earth. Good Will Towards Max'

Leveraging Your Links - Keep Your Google Juice

Are you leveraging your links on pages of your website?

Don't spill your Google Juice!

I get emails on a regular basis from new websites that would like to exchange links with me. They often start by informing me how I can benefit from such a link exchange. Exchanging links with sites can be effective in getting traffic from the site linking to you but it can also suck out all your Google Juice.

Sites that are linked to from lots of other sites are regularly deemed more popular and therefore get a much higher ranking in search engine results. More important than the number of links though is the quality of those incoming links. Contacting the owners of Web sites that score highly for key phrases related to your content and asking them if they will provide a link back to your site isn’t a bad idea.

The first thing I do when I get contacted by one of these site owners is check the Page Rank of their website. If their page rank is lower than my own page rank then I know that it will most likely not be beneficial to me to exchange links with them. You could be tricky and add a rel="nofollow" tag after the link, these tags are like plugs that stop your hard earned Google Juice from flowing out of your site and into theirs.

Content within your own website should also be correctly linked together so that search engine web crawlers can follow links within your own website. If you don’t provide working links to all your pages, some of your content may not get indexed….and that’s not good.

Why pass your Google Juice on to others? pass it to pages within your own site instead with effective internal linking.

* Editor's Note: Contrary to popular belief, Google Juice is not made from freshly squeezed search engines but is high in vitamin PR.



Image by CR CC BY-SA 3.0

Have You Registered Your Website?

Once you've built and optimized your Web site, it's best to manually register your site with major search engines, like Yahoo!, Google, the Open Directory Project at DMOZ.org, LookSmart, and Ask Jeeves, or have a partner like Submitnet to do it for you. Registration doesn't take long, but do be careful to follow the instructions provided by each engine, as they are all a little different. Careless mistakes could keep your site from being indexed properly, or at all.