This general optimization section presents a number of guidelines that you also need to know about optimizing your website. These are the rules that are not categorized in the previously discussed topics in our A Guide to SEO.
The following are recommendations on how to proceed with general optimization. They are based from our extensive research gathered from years of doing SEO work.
Maintaining the Right Page Size
Visitors of websites prefer easy navigation within the website for them to stay interested in its content. They tend to click to other sites when they get frustrated from the long loading time.
Websites should have a maximum size of 100 kilobytes of text content. For optimization purposes, a page with around 40 kilobytes is the best choice. If there’s no way to reduce the page size, you can try splitting it into separate pages. To get a good ranking, the webpage should contain targeted and concise keywords.
Placing Fresh Content
Websites that frequently update their content usually attract more visits from users as well as search engines. Websites that have no new content will only bore its visitors and they will quickly click the back button. It’s important to go through your pages regularly so that you can identify which parts need changes and fresh look. Small changes matter because it indicates that the site’s owner is doing something in maintaining it. As a rule of thumb, webpages should be updated at least once in 6 months.
Know the Importance of MetaTags
Metatags are made of up to 200 characters and are used to describe the webpage. There should be one unique metatag description for each page.
Metatags are still widely used in displaying information even if their importance has waned through the years. They are used by Google as the source of the website’s description when displayed in a search listing. To attract the attention of readers in search listings, your metatags should describe your webpage in a detailed and concise manner.
Redirecting Pages
When crawlers of search engines try to reach a webpage, they usually have problems when they encounter HTTP status codes of 301. Ideally, a webpage must return a 200 HTTP status code.
Google Indexing
It is advisable to manually list your website in a Google index, if you still haven’t done so yet. Alternatively, you may do a ROR map submission.
Yahoo Indexing
Yahoo is another place that website owners should submit their website to for indexing. They can either do it manually or make a ROR submission.
Bing Indexing
Bing index is another website that website owners should consider for site submission. Submitting to Bing can be done manually or through ROR submission.
Validating the JavaScript
Trying to determine a reference to a JavaScript file that is broken can be challenging. Take note that JavaScript files should return HTTP status code of 200 like all other pages in the site.
Validating the Stylesheet
Spotting reference to CSS files that are broken is a tedious job. All CSS files must return a 200 HTTP status code like any other page in your site.
Redirecting to non-www
When people decide to link up to your webpage, oftentimes they would do it either by linking to www.samplesite.com/my-page.html or samplesite.com/my-page.html.
Sometimes, this action can lead search engines viewing them as two separate webpages even if it’s not the case.
As a result, you will have 13 backlinks for www.samplesite.com/my-page.html and 7 backlinks for samplesite.com/my-page.html instead of a total of 20 backlinks. In the process, it can make the trustworthiness of the backlinks diluted.
To deal with this issue, it is recommended that the webserver be configured to 301 redirect for requests to samplesite.com/*.html be set to www.yoursite.com/*.html as illustrated below
See how it is done in an Apache .htaccess file:
—————————————————————————
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yoursite\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
—————————————————————————
See how it is done in a Lighttpd config file:
—————————————————————————
$HTTP["host"] =~ "^([^.]+\.[^.]+)$" {
url.redirect = (
“^/(.*)” => “http://www.%1/$1″
)
}
—————————————————————————
Using Tracking Codes
Tracking your website’s statistics is always a great practice. This is particularly helpful in tracking the progress of your SEO campaign.
If You’re Done Building Links for Your Website…
You can now go ahead to our Link Building Tips guide or you may choose another strategy from our A Guide to SEO.
- Affordable SEO Services
- Backlinking Strategies
- Body Content Optimization
- Customized SEO Services
- Effective Guide in Assessing Quality Backlinks
- Frequently Asked Questions About SEO
- Fuel SEO thru Ethical Linking Campaign
- General Optimization
- Keyword Research Strategies
- Link Building Tips
- Page Title Optimization
- Pagelinking Strategies
- URL Optimization
