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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Checklist - Page titles and link text

Page titles and link text

Search engine optimisation is pretty much part and parcel of creating websites these days. Getting the basics right don't require a large amount of work, but can make all the difference. Many of these also improve the general usability and accessibility of your site too - so you get three major benefits rolled into one.

The points below are just a few basics I've picked up along the way; roughly in order of my own priority, relating specifically to technical changes you can make on your own site, regardless of any incoming links, frequency of page updates, or link building you may do; I'm not claiming this is a comprehensive list by any means - but I'd be very interested to from others as to what they've found.

1. It's all about the page title!

If you can't spare time to do anything else, at least do this! Ensure there is a unique title for each page on your site, and make it as keyword rich, and relevant to the content on the page as you can. If you always include, say, a company name and tagline in the page title, that's great - but it's generally a good idea to ensure the portion relevant to the page appears first. Seach engines truncate the titles, so it makes sense to have the most relevant and useful information at the start - and the consistent company name and tagline at the end - for both users scrolling through pages of results, and for the engines themselves.

2. Think about the text being used to link to pages

We've all seen Google "bombing" in action - the most famous being "miserable failure" taking you straight off to the white house. Interestingly, Google has now pulled the plug on that particular quirk. However, the general rule remains the same - if a search engine picks up a link with the text "great .NET products", even if the page itself doesn't mention those particular keywords, you can still be listed in those search results.

If you find yourself creating a bunch of hyperlinks along the lines of "Find more here", "more information", "click here" - you're wasting a potential goldmine of keywords, and from an accessibility angle, each distinct URL linked to from a page should have distinct text associated with it anyway . Think twice as to whether you can include some more relevant keywords in the link text, such as "Find more developer jobs here".

James first started writing tutorials on Visual Basic in 1999 whilst starting this website (then known as VB Web). Since then, the site has grown rapidly, and James has written numerous tutorials, articles and reviews on VB, PHP, ASP and C#. In October 2003, James formed the company Developer Fusion Ltd, which owns this website, and also offers various development services. In his spare time, he's a 3rd year undergraduate studying Computer Science in the UK. He's also a Visual Basic MVP.

Comments

  • Re: Meta Robots Tag

    Posted by stixoffire on 05 Jun 2007

    Ever have a shopping cart page that just lists items in the cart - a checkout page or perhaps a page that shows you the Please Wait Timer - also some work arounds for some things you create a BLANK...

  • Meta Robots Tag

    Posted by John D. on 24 Apr 2007

    I've been reading much about SEO and came across the Meta Robots Tag. I've read many artcles that explain how to use this tag to stop some robots form indexing certain pages  - So my question ...

  • Re: [6624] Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Checklist

    Posted by yash_coolbuddy_forindia on 21 Apr 2007

    sir could u solve my two problems


     


     


     


    whicha r as foollows:


    1. as i can get ip address,city,username,computername,date,time