WebGUI - Gaining Rank on Search Engines - Content Management System | CMS | Open Source Content Management | Web Application Framework

Gaining Rank on Search Engines

So you've built a site and you want to get hooked up with some search engines? Well, that's a pretty tall order these days, but here are some tips and tricks to get you going.

Meta Description

The meta description tag does not influence page rank, but it is still an important component of SEO because it is displayed on the SERP. A well-written, relevant and compelling description will often get the click, even over a higher-ranked page.

You should have a unique meta description for every page of your site.

Alt Elements

Write alt text for your images. The alt text should contain any text that is on the image, or a description of the image if it has no text. This allows crawlers to read the image, and aids users who are using alternate ways to access your site, such as screen readers.

Titles

Use unique titles for each of your pages (which is handled by default in WebGUI). Put your keywords in the title field.

Content

If you want to do well on the search engines, then it's not only important that you provide good or useful content, but that your content is phrased properly. Good spelling can go a long way. Proper grammar also helps. Most importantly, be sure that there are a lot of nouns and adjectives in your content. Most search engines throw out adverbs, verbs, and conjunctions.

No Frames

When you build your site, don't use frames. Search engines have difficulty indexing framed sites. Also, if they do end up indexing it, they won't index your frameset document, but rather your content pages (often without any sort of navigation at all).

Text Navigation

A lot of people like to use graphic or even animated navigation on their site. While some people think this looks cool, search engines don't. Search engines read text. If your links aren't text-based then the search engines have a hard time spidering them (if they can spider them at all). No matter how much you like your flaming blinking jazzed-up navigation system, dump it if you want good search engine placement. At the very least, provide alternate text-based navigation at the bottom of all your pages.

Cross-Site Promotion

We saved the best for last. These days, the more sites that link to you, the more likely you are to get ranked high in the search engines. It's also not just the number of sites that link to you but the quality of those sites. If they are ranked high, then you'll be ranked higher. This concept was invented by Google and is called PageRank and is now used in 80% of searches on the Internet.
"Nearly four out of five Internet searches happen on Google or on sites that license its technology." ~ Wired Magazine / January, 2003

What all this means is that if you know of sites that link to your site (or if you control multiple sites) you'll do well to submit the linking sites at the same time you submit yourself. There are programs on the market that help you do that process a little easier.