Posted on: August 3rd, 2008 Is your website optimised for search engines?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is all about making your website search engine friendly. Besides typing in your “www.yourwebsite.com.au” and back links from other sites, search engines are the only way people can find your site – hence the importance of having your website optimised for search engines.
While everyone wants to be up the top of a Google search results list, many website are designed and built in such a way that aren’t search engine friendly, and as a result, they lose a lot of potential traffic.
Here are some SEO mistakes that are commonly made – does your website have any of them?
1. Splash Page / Entry Page
You go to a website where the first page is a huge image or flash banner, with a logo and saying ‘Click here to enter’.
That’s OK if you don’t care about what a search engine knows about your site, but if you do, a splash page is a big mistake.
You see, search engines have these things called ‘spiders’, which crawl through your website tracking all the links and content. The problem with a splash page is that the majority of the time, the link to the main site is embedded in the image, which stops the search engine spider from going any further.
The solution: Your homepage should include, at a minimum, target keywords and links to other pages in your site that are important.
2. Flash Menus or Flash Websites
While Flash might look pretty cool, it’s only a great tool if it’s used properly. When it comes to SEO, things like Flash menus, Flash Banners which contain keywords, or just a complete flash website, aren’t the best as the web spiders can’t search the site properly as they can’t read the keywords you have in your Flash banner or the navigation.
The Solution: Use Flash sparingly and not for important things such as menus or banners which contain keywords.
3. “Click Here” Link Text
I think every website has a link somewhere that says ‘Click here’ or ‘Learn more’ as the linking text. That’s fantastic if you want be ranked high for ‘Click here’! But if you want the search engines that your page has important information on a topic, then use those keywords as the links.
The Solution: Use topic/keywords as your links.
4. Page Titles
Page titles are what you see at the top of your web browser. Many sites just have their business name as the title, but the problem with that is that it’s like telling the search engine that every page on your website is the same.
The Solution: Combine your business name with keywords that are found on the individual pages.
At Naylor Design, we design and develop websites with search engine optimisation in mind to ensure that our clients receive a site that not only looks great, but is also optimised for when people start looking for them.
To see how Naylor Design can optimise your website for search engines, or design a website from scratch, contact us today on 02 4869 5541 or email us at info@naylordesign.com.au.