Search engine compatible

Hello there,

I was wondering... what is the best way to make your website search engine compatible. I want my website to be well viewed bij search engines

Greets, Zynex

 

Use semantic HTML markup (with the least amount of code necessary to do the job) for your document structure, an external CSS file for your presentation, and keep your JavaScript files in a single separate file or two (global.js or library.js usually does the trick).

Also try to avoid using too many classes and IDs in your HTML code; when you do use a class or ID, make sure the attribute has some semantic meaning. For example, class="sidebar" is much better than class="align-right" since you never know when that sidebar may be aligned to the left some day in the future.

Use headings to describe what the document is about. Don't get caught up in using them to stuff keywords in your page, or to use headings where they do not belong. Headings can (and should) contain keywords, but only those keywords that are relevant to what the page is about. H1 should be used only once per page (as the page title, though I often use it as the site title), with each other heading (H2-H6) being used at least twice.

Also make sure that your link text is used to describe what the link is about, and to point to the destination. For example, <a href="somelink.html">click here</a> is not going to get anyone's attention (including the search engines), whereas <a href="somelink.html">results of the Chicago Bears - Seattle Seahawks game</a> probably will (for the record, the Bears beat the Seahawks 27-24 in overtime -- BEAR DOWN!). Title attributes are also useful for links, since they often provide additional information about what the link is about.

<a href="somelink.html" title="NFC Divisional Playoff Scores">results of the Chicago Bears - Seattle Seahawks game</a> is a great example of how to use a title attribute. Also make sure that the link text is relevant to the surrounding text.

"The 2006 National Football Conference's Divisional Playoff games were mostly passe this year, save for the nail biter at Soldier Field in Chicago. Read about the <a href="somelink.html" title="NFC Divisional Playoff Scores">results of the Chicago Bears - Seattle Seahawks game</a> for more information."

Images often need help as well. If a browser doesn't have images enabled, that browser will use the alt="" attribute to show the user the equivilent information about the image. Search engines will use this as well. Take this example for instance:

<img src="daffodils.jpg" width="300" height="200" alt="A field full of daffodils">

Code (markup):

The width and height attributes tell the browser how wide and tall the image are (it helps to cut down on the work the browser has to do), and the alt attribute provides the equivilent information for those who cannot see the image (such as search engines). If your Web page was about flowers, and one of the keywords you were targeting was daffodils, then you've already done most of the grunt work.

And last, but not least (in fact, this is the MOST important), make sure your Web pages use a proper DOCTYPE and validate against the DOCTYPE you are using.

For (X)HTML, you can use the W3C HTML Validator at http://validator.w3.org to check your pages for validation errors.

CSS has one as well, available at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator

Or you can simply go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/tidy and download HTML Tidy, which can validate your code for you (and even clean up your errors).

 

Thank you very much, that a whole bunch of great information! Im going to try to work it out. Luckely most of my files are already external, so I don't have to make too many ajustments on that.
Again thank you for your help!

Kind regards,

Zynex

 

Excellent post, Dan

Just one point to add on, your site should have a navigation that allows the bots to go from section to section easily. Thus, avoid using Flash or JavaScript powered navigation as search engine bots have difficulties accessing them.

 

You would think that's a given these days... oh wait.