We had discussed much about keeping your content fresh & alive, usability of your content management system in previous articles.

Now you read through our tip of the month which will help you in optimising your website in a better way!

We have compiled some general tips for optimising your website for effective results on search engines:

This is the most important page on your website, and of course gives the immediate impression about your business to visitors, and directs them into relevant content on the interior pages, and onto making a valuable enquiry. Your home page should not redirect or refresh to another website. Make good use of the title tag and get a couple of relevant search terms in there, this is quite an important parameter for some search engines. Meta tag usage is another important consideration, and while they are not as important as they once were, some search engines still use the Meta description for the intro they use for your website, in their result listings. Of course your home page should feature the key information that visitors will require, in order to make the decision to enter your website for more details. For instance make sure you include:

Homepage – What else can be the most important one on your website other than your homepage? Your homepage is the one which gives the first impression about your business to the visitors and directs them into relevant content on the interior pages. Your home page should not redirect or refresh to another website. You also need to think of the SEO benefits here, make good use of the title tag and get a couple of relevant search terms in there, this is quite an important parameter for some search engines.

Meta tag usage is another important consideration, some search engines still use the Meta description for the intro they use for your website. So it is advisable to include meta tags for your website.

Of all these your home page should feature the key information that your visitors will require, in order to make the decision to enter your website for more details and stay longer, for this you must consider the following:

- your logo/branding

- what your business does

- what your business provides to your customers

- your contact details (or at least email address)

Try avoiding flashy images and graphics unless necessary. Search engines can't read the text inside images.

It is very very important that you do your keyword research, and use them in all the right places and in the correct density on your home page, such as the Meta tags, headings, alt tags for images, and the body text.

Not only the home page, your products and services page needs to be optimised as well. When it comes to product page you need to be bit specific on the keywords you use. Use product, or service-specific keywords, and change them and make them relevant to each page. For e-commerce/shopping websites try and include keyword-rich introductions or descriptions for your product listings. You must also avoid using duplicate contents between products as search engines will have a bad impact on this.

Remember, we discussed this in our previous article “Keep your website – Content Fresh!” News pages are a great way to get search engine friendly content into your website, and to keep it changing and fresh. Ideally your CMS will you to manage the News pages in terms of the content efficiently; In spite of just updating news pages if you can edit the Meta tags of the article pages as well, then that lets you create maximum effectiveness on search engines.

Google especially rates the number of inbound links to your website from other websites as valuable and this directly affects your page rank and success in the search results. Get as many quality and relevant inbound links as you can, by honest means. By that we mean obtain links into your website from other businesses websites in a natural way, by building relationships. Never use link farms (where you buy links).

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