Contents
SEO Basics
How Search Engines Work
How to Choose Keywords for SEO
How to Optimize Your Site for SEO
How to Optimize Your HTML for SEO
How to Optimize Page Content for SEO
How to Get Links to Your Website
How to Get Your Website Included in
Directories and Search Engines
How to Assess the Success of
Your SEO Campaign
SEO Tactics to Avoid
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How to Optimize Your Site for SEO
Before you begin to modify the actual content of your website’s pages for SEO, you first need to make sure your site has a solid foundation for SEO. To do so, you must make the following components of your site SEO friendly:
- Domain name
- Robots.txt file
- Sitemap
- Filenames
Choosing an Effective Domain Name for SEO
A domain name is the name that you type into a browser to get to a specific website. The domain name itself consists of everything after the prefix, which usually starts with http://www. So, for example, quamut.com is a domain name, whereas the complete address of the Quamut website is http://www.quamut.com. To choose a domain name ideally suited for SEO, follow these guidelines:
- Include keywords: If you intend to create a site specifically about poodle grooming, you’ll want to include the words poodle and grooming in the domain name. Since so many nouns and simple combinations of nouns (such as poodle grooming) are already registered domains, you’ll need to think of a domain name that contains your keywords and is still available. For instance, if you’re running a poodle grooming business based in New York City, you might choose a domain name like www.poodlegroomingnyc.com. A domain that includes your keywords would be a more effective choice than a more generic name, such as www.joansgrooming.com, or an abbreviation, such as www.poodgroom.com.
- Keep it short: Keep your domain name as short as possible. Shorter domains are easier for users to remember. Also, search engine crawlers sometimes blacklist long domain names loaded with strings of keywords because they assume that such sites are spam.
- Use a .com address: Some search engines favor .com addresses over the less common addresses ending in .net, .tv, .cc, and so on. Also, users tend to think of .com addresses as more legitimate or established, and they often type .com even if the correct address ends differently.
How to Change Your Site’s Domain Name
Though your domain name alone is unlikely to determine your website’s success, good names do help with SEO, so it may be worth the trouble to switch to a better name. Here are the steps you can take to change your site’s domain name:
- See whether the new name is available: Search for your proposed name on www.whois.net or try to register it at a domain name registrar like www.godaddy.com to determine its availability.
- Create a duplicate of your site at the new address: Copy all the files and directories from your existing website to the new one. If you don’t know how to do this, your hosting provider can walk you through the process or perhaps even do it for you.
- Redirect users to the new site: A URL redirect automatically directs users from one site to another. It’s crucial that you set up your redirect correctly. For changing domain names, the only redirect that’s appropriate to use is called a HTTP 301 redirect. Other redirects may be ignored by search engines. Your site’s webmaster, web server administrator, or hosting company can assist you with this step if necessary.
- Delete the old site: Once you and your users have made the transition to the new site, remove all of the files from your old site.
Filenames
Every page on your website has its own specific address, which is usually based on the HTML filename of the page. For example, a page on your poodle grooming site that’s specific to brushes might be titled www.poodlegroomingnyc.com/brushes.html. Just as keywords should be part of your domain name, keywords should be part of individual filenames. So, for example, trimmers.html is a better name than page1.html because someone searching for poodle trimmers is unlikely to enter page1 into a search engine. Each page of your website should have a name that uses a keyword or two to describe the content of that page.
Creating a robots.txt File
Robots.txt is a file that tells search engine robots which parts of your site, if any, to ignore. This can be very useful if your site is still in the early stages of development. You don’t want search engines to index your site before your content is ready for public view.
Place your robots.txt file in the same directory as your website’s home page (the
index.html file). You can create and edit it in any text editor, such as Notepad or SimpleText, and the file itself often contains just a few lines of text. Below are the most common configurations of the robots.txt file.
Ignore the Entire Site
A robots.txt file with the following lines will cause search engines to ignore your entire site:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
The User-agent section lists the robots that should follow these instructions. “*” means all robots. The Disallow section lists which directories or files should be ignored. “/” means all directories.
Ignore Specific Directories
To set robots.txt to have search engines ignore certain directories in your site, place a forward slash before and after the directory name in the Disallow line. Add a new Disallow line for each directory you wish to block, as shown here:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /first directory name/
Disallow: /second directory name/
Index Every Page of the Site
Even if you don’t want search engines to ignore any part of your website, it’s good practice to include a robots.txt file anyway. This makes it crystal clear to robots that they should index your entire site. Here’s a robots.txt file that tells robots not to ignore any part of the site:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Creating a Sitemap
To help search engine spiders navigate your website, create an XML sitemap, a file that describes the organization of your website and tells search engines how to find all your pages. The XML sitemap makes it less likely that crawlers will miss any of your content when crawling your site.
Creating an XML sitemap can be a tedious technical task, so it’s best to use a free automated tool to do the job. Search online for “free xml sitemap generator” to find tools you can use to create an XML sitemap. Google’s sitemap generator (www.google.com/webmasters/tools) is especially easy to use and follows standards accepted by the major search engines.
Robots.txt and the XML Sitemap
Once you’ve created your sitemap, include a special line in your robots.txt file that tells search engines that you have an XML sitemap. Here’s what to add to robots.txt:
Sitemap: <sitemap_http://your_domain_name/sitemap.xml>
Replace your_domain_name with your actual domain name, such as www.poodlegroomingnyc.com.
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