Key Components of Web Page Optimization

So, at this point, we've discussed constructing a linking system within your site that gets the visitors and the spiders where they need to go as efficiently as possible. We've created the broad picture of how a web site should be structured. Now, it's time to dig deeper to see how the individual pages of your web site should be created in order to please the folks at Google, Yahoo! and MSN, as well as your clientele.

Just to review, the URL is the address of a web page (the www.whatever.com). The fact is, some URLs are better than others when it comes to helping the search engine spiders find and index your pages. In addition to this, some URLs do a better job at letting your human visitors know where they are at on your web site. We're going to use some real-life examples here of pages that are out there on the web. Our first example is a search on Amazon.com for Heavenly Blue Morning Glory Seeds:

http://www.amazon.com/Heavenly-Blue-Morning/dp/B000150UDG/sr=8-1/ qid=1153092967/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-7232500-1296712?ie=UTF8

Here is a search for the same product on a small business web site, 2BSeeds.com:

http://www.2bseeds.com/morninggloryheavenlyblue.shtml

In the Amazon.com example, that's one long url! Though it does contain part of the title of the product, that long string of characters after it confuses the eye and may bewilder the visitor. Often times, these mile-long urls don't have any actual words in them at all. In the second example, a shopper will have no problem understanding where he or she is, because the URL has been kept short, concise and descriptive.

What's going on here is that Amazon.com is a database-driven web site and 2BSeeds.com isn't. The Amazon.com URL contains what are called 'dynamic parameters'. These send data to the database running the site so that the correct page can be brought up for the visitor. Clues that a URL is dynamic are that it contains things like the '?' mark symbol as well as phrases like 'qid=1153092967" or 'cgi'. The biggest problem with dynamic URLs is not that they are long, however. The really big problem is that they are very difficult for the spiders to read and index. Research indicates that a URL with more than 2 dynamic parameters in it will probably never be indexed by the search engines unless it has a huge number of outside links coming into it. In other words, it's a really popular page. This is why Amazon.com can get away with having a dynamic website, and still pull great rankings for their products. And it is for this very fact that we discourage small business owners from having database-driven websites, if at all possible. You are not Amazon.com, and you want to take advantage of any edge you can get over your competition while building your website's popularity.

Database-driven websites are handy because they keep track of large inventories, among other things. The convenience of them is what sells them. However, because they create such unfriendly URLs, we feel they are a bad choice for a small business that is trying to gain an edge over the competition. If you are selling 3000 products or less, having a 'static' HTML web site is going to be your best bet. This is our professional opinion on this, because it is what we see working for our clients. A 'static' page is a page that always exists. A 'dynamic' page is a page that only exists when someone makes an inquiry about that page. For example, the morning glory seeds page in Amazon.com only exists when I type 'Heavenly Blue Morning Glory Seeds' into Amazon's search box. The database calls it up and then the website temporarily puts it together for me to view. By contrast, the 2BSeeds page, being static, really is sitting there, all the time, allowing the spiders to find it with maximum ease. Your pages will stand a much better chance of being indexed and ranked well if they always exist, rather than just being temporary. Take a look at the URLs of your web site, if you already have one. Are they dynamic? If so, they may not ever have been indexed, unless your site is hugely popular. This is, again, one of the big problems with those template-based web site packages. Nearly all of them are data-base driven. Because this SEO guide is written specifically for the small web business owner, we do urge you to avoid dynamic web pages. Everything which will help to get your pages indexed and ranked well is going to be so important to the profits you make from your business, and this dynamic/static issue is one of the big ones, in our opinion.

To see what a title tag is, look up at the top of your browser. The title tag is in the very uppermost left of the screen, and the title tag of this page reads, 'Key Components of Web Page Optimization'. Anybody looking at this immediately gets the snapshot picture of what this page is going to be all about. In addition to this, the title tag gives the spiders the same information, and it is very, very important. Neglect of title tags remains prevalent on the Internet, even amongst paid designers and it is one bit of your code that you don't want to miss! Take the time to write each title tag individually, for each page of your website. Optimize your title tags so that they include your most important keyword phrase pertaining to that page. The keyword phrase in our title tag, above, is 'web page optimization'. If you're selling a Duracraft Ceiling Fan, that should be the title tag of that page. Don't use gimmicky words like #1 or 'really great'. Those aren't keywords. And, apart from your homepage, don't include your business name in your title tag, unless your business is so famous, it has become a keyword like "Coca-Cola" or "Amazon.com". Title tags are just one more reason why the small business owner should have a handcoded website, as opposed to a templated package one. You need to be able to access the code of the page to write the title tag, and most templates won't let you do this.

Chances are, if you've been researching SEO for your small business web site, you have run into some controversy on this issue. Uneducated paid web designers don't know what meta tags are. Scamming SEO companies tell you SEO is all about stuffing meta tags full of keywords. Legitimate SEO professionals argue, pleasantly, about how much importance meta tags really have. There are different schools of thought on this, and our opinion is as follows.

The two main meta tags most commonly used are the Meta Description and the Meta Keywords. These tags are generally found in the top portion of the code of a web page. We believe that the Meta Description tag is very important, and that the Meta Keywords tag is of minor importance. The main thing for you to understand is that Meta Tags Have Nothing To Do With Search Engine Rankings. If an SEO company approaches you and tells you Meta Tags improve your search engine rankings, say goodbye and hang up the phone. This misconception is like the calling card of a bad SEO company. Believe us on this! Yet, the meta description tag does serve an important role, when it comes to click through rate (the number of people who see your listing in the search engine results and click on it to visit your site). Because the search engines frequently use the meta description as the second line of text in your listing, having a well-written, compelling tag may lead more people to choose to click on your listing, instead of someone else's. The following example shows how Google has used the Title Tag and the Meta Description Tag to list our page for an Expert SEO Review:

The meta description reads, "Offering a quick, affordable and expert SEO review of your small business website". Sounds pretty good to me! It's clear and easy to understand, and contains important keywords in a natural manner. Google is currently ranking this page at #1 and lots of people must think it looks like a good page to visit, because we get many, many hits on this. So, take the time to write individual meta description tags for each of your pages in hopes of making a good second-line sales pitch to the public.

It was once felt that the Meta Keywords Tag was a key component to search engine rankings. Whether this was ever true, it certainly no longer is, and spammy techniques of stuffing this tag full of every keyword known to man are now looked down upon. We know for a fact that some professional SEO companies are now no longer even using the meta keywords tag in their code. Others use this tag to list plurals of words (i.e. watch, watches, cow, cows, etc.). Or, we've seen some folks using it to list common misspellings of their keywords. For instance, if you sell wallpaper, and your keyword research leads you to the discovery that a lot of people searching for this product are spelling it 'walpaper', you might opt to include those misspellings in your meta keywords tag. At this point, Solas Web Design continues to use the Meta Keywords tag on the sites we build, but we never list more than a couple of keywords for any given page we build. They simply don't seem to make much difference, as far as we can tell.

So, to recap the lessons you've learned here, you now know good SEO for your web pages requires that you individualize your title tags for each and every page to make the most of your important keywords. Good meta descriptions foster higher click through rates. And, having static web pages will give a small business web site an edge over competitors who have dynamic pages. We are now ready to move on to one of the key aspects of creating web pages that are valued by the search engines: text content writing.

Next: Good web content makes the Googlebot your friend.

Return to the SEO Guide Outline.