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On Page Optimisation Practices Part 2
On page optimisation takes into account over the overall ‘keyword density’ on a page. You can ensure that your densities are within a reasonable range, perhaps as a rough guide, between 5% and 15% - although this does may vary considerably from engine to engine - this recommended range could be considered quite reasonable.
What is a 'Keyword Density'? For example if you only have 20 words on a page and 2 of them are ‘sports shoes’ then the keyword density would be 10%. (Note: Do not count words common words like ‘the’, ‘and’ and ‘is’ as words for the purposes of processing a page’s relevancy.)
Commandment: Thou Shalt Know Thy Competition
To get a feel for what seems to be working - always check out your competition. See who ranks highest and under what keywords. Right click and select View Source and take a look at where and how they're structuring there site and keywords.
Discover what sort of keyword densities they're using.
'First come, first serve'
Consider the first one-third of you page to be the most important as far as determining relevancy goes...
So the first meta tags, the first alt text, the first heading text or body text is the most important.
! Tread with care - Don't be over zealous
Remember... when using your keywords - be willing to substitute synonyms, rotate their order and don't use the exact same multi-word keyword phrase more than once on a page. Don't over do it, or you may be penalised for perceived 'keyword stuffing' or 'keyword spamming'.
What about my images (and other fancy multimedia stuff)?
Bear in mind that search engines tend to like text (which it can read) much better than graphics, flash or other multimedia stuff. This is mainly due to the fact that it can't be sure what an image or flash presentation is actually about, and therefore isn't sure how much relevancy to assign to them.
To help remedy this... ensure you sure an ALT with each image on your page.
ALT tags
ALT text are 'alternative' text that are used when a web browser doesn't load an image. So it sort of like a description of an image. You can use you ALT tags to your advantage though... by including pertinent keywords within it.
Here's the form an ALT tag take in HTML
<IMG SRC="shoe_shop_promo.jpg" ALT="Discounted brand name shoes in North Sydney as well as bright red ladies heels on sale">
Comment Tags
You can add your keywords to comment tags as well, though there isn't much evidence that they'll be paid attention too. (Not by Google anyway, but Yahoo Search might put a bit more weight on them)... As usual though, don't over do it.
Using Cascading Style Sheets
If your website simply must use lots of graphics and flash to achieve it’s purpose, you can consider using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to suitably format your site. This will allow things such as flash presentations to be delivered, while the search engine spiders still get to process the page primarily as text.
CSS will allow you to position style elements in another file, so you can keep you html pages more elegant and include appropriate text on them.
Of course it may be a bit of extra work to learn to use CSS for your websites, but it may be worth your while if consistently dealing with graphic / multimedia rich content.
What about my complex script-based or database driven site?
Once again, search engine don't tend to really like sites written in JavaScript, PHP, ASP or Database driven sites etc. While they certain can try to spider dynamically generated pages they may not find them all or get all the information out of a database.
While CSS can be used to some extent to locate some of the offending elements off-page, sometimes this simply isn't enough for some sites that must have the integrity of their appearance / coding etc unaltered.
IP Redirection or Cloaking
This (like many techniques) can be subject to abuse. However, when used carefully and judiciously, can be very powerful.
It search engines more correctly index your website, and also help stop competitors from stealing the optimised code of your website.
Essentially, IP Redirection involves using a special script which keeps up to date with the IP addresses of the various search engine spiders/robots. When a spider comes-a-visiting it delivers specially optimised content, but when a 'normal' visitor arrives they will see the site just as you've originally designed.
Contact us if you'd like us to set up an IP Redirection script for you...
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Process: Explained In-Depth Guide to SEM
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SEM Advantage (SPS Group Pty Ltd) Suite 207, 410 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010, Australia
p 61 2 9280 0010
f 61 2 9280 0081
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All content is (c) copyright 2004 SEM Advantage
No reproduction permitted without prior written consent |
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SEM Advantage (SPS Group Pty Ltd)
Suite 207, 410 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010, Australia p 61 2 9280 0010 f 61 2 9280 0081
Copyright (C) 2003 SPS Group Pty Ltd. No Reproduction permitted
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