Disability Accessibility Accessible Website Design

Search Engine Optimization Tips for High Rankings

In this part of our continuing series on how to build a great website we examine some of the factors that show signs of quality in a website to the search engines.

The world's most used search engine, Google, has stated there are over 200 criteria, or signs of a quality website, their search engine algorithm takes into account when ranking a site in the search engine positions (SERPS).

Because Google is currently the world's most popular search engine, webmasters generally concentrate their efforts in getting their website to rank as high as possible in the Google search results, followed by Yahoo, and MSN (Live Search). Obviously the higher a website ranks in the search results the more traffic it will attract. If the website sells products or advertising space then the more "hits" a site receives the better chance the website has of making money online.

Although Google, or any other search engine, does not disclose the "secret sauce" behind their website ranking algorithm there are several obvious signs of quality that stand out in a website. All search engines strive to list only quality informative websites and are constantly tweaking their algorithms to prevent spammy low quality sites from appearing in their search results.

If you are new at website design and search engine optimization (SEO), thinking about building your first website, or you feel your website may need a "clean up", after receiving a Google penalty (loss of website rankings), then here are some guidelines to take into consideration when building a quality website.

Implementing the signs of a quality site should vastly improve your chances of being ranked higher in search engines such as MSN’s Live Search, Yahoo, and Google's search results. If you intend to make a living from working online and are in for the long haul then designing a quality website is a must.

Positive Signs of a Quality Website

Onsite Factors

Shows the website provides a means of contacting the owner(s) for further inquiries or feedback.

2/ Does the site contain physical contact information eg. Street address and/or phone number.

Shows the website is not a fly-by-night operation if it has a physical address and phone number.

3/ Are pages on the website related to the general theme of the entire site.

A visitor to your website would soon get confused if one page is about cats and the next about cooking - unless your website is about cooking cats.

4/ Does the website reference and/or link to on topic authority sites.

By providing links to other quality on topic websites you are providing more useful information to your visitors. No website can cover every topic of a subject so don't be afraid of linking out to sites that can offer more information on a topic. This will benefit your site, never harm it.

5/ Does the website code validate according to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards.

Not considered essential by the search engines yet, but may be an important factor in the future, you may as well get it right from the start. Valid code does help people with disabilities especially those who use screen readers.

6/ Age of the site. Has the website been online for several years.

A spammy website is often considered as a throw away domain and unlikely to last very long. A website that has been around for a few years usually means the site is of some quality.

7/ Does the Title Tag and Meta Description Tag accurately reflect the webpage content.

Describe the page in the title tag accurately in as few words as possible, likewise your page's description meta tag should outline what the web page is about in under 25 words.

8/ Do picture alt and title tags accurately describe what the picture is.

If the picture is of a horse eating hay don't just put "horse" in the alt tag, instead write "Picture of a horse eating hay". Doing this will provide several benefits including; outlining what the picture is to those with visual impairments, up your chances of the picture ranking higher in search engine image searches, and providing your webpage content is related to the picture, you have added extra keyword text to your page. Do not stuff as many words as you can in the alt tag though. Be short, accurate, and descriptive.

10/ Do web pages contain quality unique and informative content.

Content is king they say, but unique well written content is the nectar of the God's to search engine spiders. Feed them the nectar and in return you will be well rewarded.

11/ Is the website listed in quality reference sites such as Wikipedia, DMOZ, and the Yahoo Directory.

A human edited directory is one where a person will review your website and if it is of suitable quality they will list it in the directory. Search engines are aware of which directories are human edited for quality and which ones will accept any site submitted to them. Only list your site in the better directories like BOTW, Cool site of the day, Yahoo Directory, and DMOZ. (there are several other quality directories as well)

12/ Does the web page have a good content to code ratio.

Try to prevent code bloat outweighing your text, there is no set code to text ratio but the less code you can use the better. Use CSS as much as possible in your website design.

13/ Is the website content unique and useful to visitors.

Do not copy and paste from other websites, apart from copyright infringement the search engines have no desire to list multiple copies of the same article. Likewise do not use articles from article directories, write your own content. Like we said above unique content is nectar to the search engine God's. Make your content useful, everyone knows a banana is yellow but do they know how it becomes yellow, or the purpose of it being yellow instead of pink? Another favorite is to create how to lists, people are always searching for information, provide it to them.

14/ Does the website have a privacy policy.

Having a privacy policy shows the visitor what information you collect on them when they access your website. It also shows you care and took the time to put it together, even if it was to prevent you from being sued. A spammy site is unlikely to bother with a privacy policy, but that does not mean all sites without them are spammy sites, it is just another sign of a quality website.

15/ Is there a terms of service (TOS) on the site.

Similar to above, a terms of service outlines to a visitor their permitted use of your website and contents. It also usually provides disclaimers.

16/ Does the error page (404) return a 404 header.

A 404 error page, which occurs when a webpage that is not available or no longer exists is come across, should provide the visitor with a means of navigating to the websites home page at a minimum, and preferably to a page that possibly provides the information they were seeking. A 404 page should always return a 404 header, use an online 404 header checker to be sure your website does. To avoid having too many 404 errors on your website - removed or moved pages should use a 301 redirect.

17/ Are pages on the website updated regularly.

Updated web pages and new pages added regularly (freshness) to a website "tells" the search engine spiders (bots that the search engines use to crawl web pages) to crawl your site more frequently to look for new content and changed web pages. If you update your website or blog daily the search engines will come to "know" that fact and generally send their spider to seek new content on your site or blog daily. It has also been said that the higher your websites PR (Page rank) is, the more frequently your site will be spidered. Sometimes within minutes of adding new content a spider will visit the site, find the new content or web page, and list the information in the search results, most people concur that for this to happen so fast you need a minimum PR6 or higher page rank.

18/ Does the website logo when clicked take you to the sites homepage.

Google for one have stated on several occasions that a top logo on all website pages should take a visitor to the homepage when clicked. In fact, I have heard that a few websites who applied for Google Adwords were told to make their logo link to the homepage.

19/ Length of time a visitor spends on a website (Bounce rate)

This one is debatable. Some say clicking a listing in the search engine results and then clicking back to the search page in a few seconds may be a sign of a low quality site. Whereas spending time on the website and viewing further pages is a sign of quality. However what if the search engine failed to provide a good listing for what the user was searching for. Or maybe the page showed the visitor exactly what they wanted and they had no need to visit further pages. As always the best solution is to provide the information a visitor is seeking with links to further information where appropriate. Making your website "sticky" where the surfer stays for a longer period of time is a good practice. UPDATE: It has been noted recently that if your site is receiving over 80 percent bounce rate back to the search results, then it's very likely your search result rankings will be demoted or dropped completely.

20/ Do web pages on the site load quickly

A fast loading page does not make your site visitors wait an excessive amount of time to view the content. Not only is this is a key factor for many highly competitive niches, but search engine also take page loading times into consideration. You can see Google's report on your websites average page loading time in your Google Webmaster Account.

Offsite Factors

1/ Do on topic authority sites link to or reference the website e.g. .gov and .edu sites.

Incoming links from authority websites such as .gov and .edu TLDs or domain name extensions are like gold as they show the search engines your website contains information that is of value to persons seeking further references.

2/ Do on topic authority websites that link to a website also have entopic incoming and out going links.

Search engines study and chart not only which websites link to you, but also what sites link to the site linking to yours. It is unknown to the public exactly how many websites "back" they take this linking into account.

3/ Has the website received a regular and steady amount of new incoming links pointing to it over time.

As a website "grows" and matures it is natural for it to gain incoming links, providing it is worthy of linking to. Search engines have had years to study natural linking patterns (A link to a website that is not reciprocated, asked for, or paid for). Wikipedia defines exponential growth as: Occurring when the growth rate of a mathematical function is proportional to the function's current value. With exponential growth of a positive value its rate of increase steadily increases. For any exponentially growing quantity, the larger the quantity gets, the faster it grows.

Search engines, in particular Google, base natural incoming links on exponential growth data models. Too many incoming links in a short period of time equals unnatural links. There are of course exceptions to this rule, for example: an established well visited websites may publish a popular article and acquire hundreds if not thousands of incoming links overnight. For a new website though, too many incoming links too soon would send a signal of possible link spam to the search engines.

Negative Signs of a Website

Onsite Factors

Reciprocal links are out. 3 way links are out. Write great informative content and you will receive natural incoming links.

2/ Is a lot of the text on the website misspelled.

Lots of Misspelled text and bad grammar is a turnoff for any website. Take the time to get it right - run your text through a spell checker before publishing online.

3/ Alt tags for pictures stuffed with keywords

Worked in the past but not today. Stuffed keywords in Alt tags make a site spammy. Search engines have long matured to the point they can easily recognise alt text spam.

4/ Keyword stuffed Title and/or Description tags.

Not only does a page Title stuffed with keywords look spammy it will also deter searchers clicking on them. Construct brief to the point page titles for all your pages.

5/ Web page content stuffed with keywords and phases that barely make sense to a visitor.

Sentences and paragraphs stuffed with keywords sound ridiculous when read out loud. There is no longer any need to have a high keyword to text content.

6/ Website has obvious paid, or link exchanged links, in the footer pointing to off topic websites.

Many a website has been banned from the search engines lately for adding footer links to non-related websites and even to on topic sites. Websites buying and selling links are getting penalized left, right, and center lately.

7/ Web page content is copied and pasted from other websites (Duplicate content).

Though Google has stated duplicate content is not penalized they strive to only list one version of an article in the search results, which will probably not be yours. Write your own original content and reap the benefit.

8/ Do web pages contain hidden or tiny text on the webpage(s).

Old search engine spammers trick. No longer works, looks stupid, and will most likely get your website banned.

9/ Does the website contain links to affiliate programs.

Affiliate programs are fine as long as you also provide good original content of use to visitors on your website. Thin affiliate sites (little useful content) are seldom seen in high search positions.

10/ Is the website overloaded with advertisements.

We have all seen websites with little to no content and ads plastered all over the pages. Google for one is getting hard on MFA (Made for Adsense) websites. New websites should avoid placing advertisements on pages until the website is well established.

11/ Is the website cloaked.

Cloaked pages may have worked in the past but don't even think about cloaking pages on your website today.

12/ Lots of text duplicated on pages.

If you have lots of similar text on your pages, such as a disclaimer, think about putting it into an iframe so your pages do not end up reading and looking much the same and ending up in the supplementary index.

13/ Website has a "links page" for outgoing links and exchanges.

Link pages are out. Instead of a links page link out to relevant websites in the body of the text where appropriate. Good for your visitors - good for the search engines.

14/ Does the site scrape content by RSS or Website Scraping Scripts.

Duplicate content again. The search engines would rather list the original page containing the story or article, not a page that merely links to it.

15/ Very few outbound links to other sites.

Little or no out bound links give off signals of an un-natural website and PR (Page rank) hogging. Don't be afraid to link out to on topic relevant sites that can provide more information on a topic. Doing so will help your website never hurt it.

16/ Domain name contains numerous dashes (my-spammy-web-site.com)

Looks bad and nearly impossible for anyone to remember the URL (web address) of your website. Possible loss of scoring points by the search engines.

17/ Web page takes forever to load due to huge un-optimised image sizes.

Design your web pages to be as fast loading as possible. Optimize any pictures you use as much as possible - without losing too much picture quality - to help page load times.

18/ Website has a barrage of popups.

Bad for your visitors and will certainly never give them incentive to bookmark and/or return to your website.

19/ Server and/or database errors on the pages.

Looks unattractive and obviously not all your web page content is been shown to visitors.

20/ Website has pages "under construction".

This was popular in the early days of the Internet but is frowned on today. Pages under construction offer nothing of value to a visitor. Don't put the page online until it is finished.

21/ Broken Links

Does the website contain a lot of broken links to internal pages and other external websites? Use Xenu Link Sleuth, a free tool, that checks your website for broken links.

Offsite Factors

1/ Is the website part of a reciprocal link triangle or 3 (or more) way link exchange, i.e. I'll link to your website if your website links to my other website.

Link exchanges are out. Aim at writing quality informative information and incoming links will come naturally.

2/ Has the website suddenly gained a flood of low quality incoming links.

Trying too hard to have your website recognized by posting links everywhere in blog comments, forums, inappropriate places etc. will most likely result in a penalty by the search engines.

3/ Links to the website posted in hundreds/thousands of off topic blogs, blog comments, and forums.

See above answer.

4/ Does the website purchase links from high Google Page Rank (PR) websites in order to boost it's own PR.

Buying links is out, search engines, particularly Google, frown on this practice and if caught you can wave goodbye to any rankings you have built up. Your site will most likely receive the notorious - 950 penalty (listed at position 950 in search results on Google).

5/ Does the site owner own multiple domains all linking to each other (Network of sites).

Building a network of sites all linking to one another in order to boost each others ranking is easily detected and will eventually land you a penalty.

6/ Inbound links only point to the sites homepage.

If pages on your website contain good informative information there is no reason people wouldn't link to them (deep linking). All incoming links pointing ONLY to your homepage is not natural.

Disputes:

No doubt there will be readers who disagree with some of these factors by thinking something like not having a privacy policy is not a bad thing. Your right! A lot of these points aren't essential, but with Google taking into account over 200 factors in their ranking algorithm every point you get right WILL help your website and may mean the difference of being on page 1 of the search engine results instead of page 2. Incorporating these pointers into building a quality website from the start will most certainly benefit your site and its many visitors in the years to come.

Discuss these website quality guidelines or add other points to the list using our comment link at the bottom of the page..

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