In the previous "keyphrase selection" topic we discussed the importance of selecting the most appropriate keyphrases to optimise for. There are several places where you can optimise, however the "first paragraph" is the most important.
Consider this, the first paragraph on your page is the paragraph most likely to be read by the most people. So therefore google also gives greater importance to the "first sentence immediately following the first main heading".
Referring to our previous keyphrase selection example, on your home page you need to write something like the following as your first paragraph.
- We provide the best accommodation in Frankton, Hamilton, NZ. When you are visiting the Waikato, come stay at our hotel in Frankton, Hamilton New Zealand.
Please note that i have bolded the keywords for clarification here.. however you don't need to do this yourself. (although it is said in some forums that some value is given to bolded or italicised words)
It's important not to over stuff your text with keywords. A general guide is to include your keyword around 1-3% of the total text on a page.
Every page is different
Every page of your website is a new page. You need to optimise each page individually. Now this is a good thing, because if your business has several focuses, then you can optimise each page for a different service or product you provide. So don't try to catch all with the home page.
Dedicate a separate page to each of your key phrases. After your first paragraph, you can continue to use more human friendly grammar, however, do try to use your keywords as often as you can on your pages.
You can even do this with your about us and contact us page. Just write a slightly different first paragraph on each one using a different keyphrase... Thus a searcher using that keyphrase might end up on your about us or contact us page, but typically, they will be able to navigate back to the appropriate section.
Be generous with the content on your website. Have about three paragraphs of text, containing plenty of keywords phrases, on any page clickable from the home page, or from a menu button. You can bury more detailed information further down on your website. Remember... too few words will prevent you from being search optimised. Too many words will scare a real person from reading it at all.
DO NOT CHEAT
Do not just repeat your keyphrases over and over... Google is smarter than that.
You need to rephrase each keyphrase differently each time you use it, as well as using words which mean the same. For instance, using suburbs within Auckland, or the City of Sails, instead of using Auckland each time.
A link to a really good page explaining how Google search works, how crawling, indexing and serving results happens.
The basic strategy and process for approaching SEO on your website
The first sentence of your opening paragraph is the most likely to be read by new cutomers and is highly relevant.
Headings and Titles are significant to all search engines.
You can enter your Meta Title, keywords and description on a page by page basis.
DO enter keywords that you have used on your page. Do NOT enter Meta keywords that are not used on your page. If you want to add a new Meta keyword, then also add it to the content of your page.
Experienced users can get additional benefits from their SEO by tweaking the filenames of the website pages.
Incoming links are like referrals to your business. More referrals are a good thing, as are incoming links.
Use our Web Stats to monitor your traffic, and for search engine optimisation. See which other websites are giving hits to your website, which search engines are working, and which keywords people have used to find your website. Web Statistics come free with every domain you register and host with us. Learn more here.
You have two options; Update your pages content to be up to date or leave it as a final version. If you leave your content alone, it will rise back up the ranks. Read here for more SEO tips to do with time.
Adwords is a way to get to the top of the google search engine results by paying per click. You will want to track the success of different campaigns.
You should not add dedicated conversion code to your website. Only the measurement ID is required to track conversions in the system.
Submit your website to as many directories and search engines as possible. The more used or relevant they are the better, so concentrate on these ones first.
We do provide Google Sitemap XML feature automatically. We also have an automatically generated public Sitemap on your websites. Learn about the Google site map in the "search engines" area on the left menu in the CMS.
Linking your domain and sitemap.xml file to a bing webmaster tools account will keep Bing up to date with changes to your website, and provide insights into search results and behaviours via their webmaster tools console.
Linking your domain and sitemap.xml file to a Google account will keep Google Search up to date with changes to your website, and provide insights into search results and behaviours via their search console.
Most Google Search Console errors are nothing to be concerned about. Learn what some of the most common Google Search Console errors are and what they mean.
It will improve your SEO if you register your domain names for several years in advance. Squatters tend not to do that, so it sets you apart. It's also safer for your IP.
Search around for more information on the internet, as SEO best practices are always changing. Read some excellent information from Google here.
Provided you follow our guidelines for building your new site and changing your domain name to your new site, your search ranking will not only be preserved but will potentially increase.
Where to add alt-text to banners or images using the tinymce or drag-drop / contentbox editors
In the Drag-drop and Contentbox editors you can improve search engine / website performance by delaying the loading of images that do not appear in the viewable area on page load.
In the Drag-drop and Contentbox editors you can apply a fetchpriority attribute to images.
It is hard to keep pages and files completely private from Google and other search engines. Here are a few guidelines and disclaimers.
You can set a redirect for any page to another via the SEO > FILE REDIRECTS area. This is handy for when you have migrated your website and want to redirect old google search results or have deleted a page and need to redirect.
If you need to make changes to your robots.txt file you can do so via the SEO area of the CMS
There is an option to load many of the JS scripts at the bottom of the page.
If your URL appears to have numbers in it, but there is not yet a filename next to the page, category or product in the SEO area of the CMS, then we advise against redirecting these URLS.