9. Optimise your links (URLs).
Article Index:
The shorter and more human readable a link the better your chances that search engines will index them. Lengthy URLs are not only ugly and difficult for visitors to remember but some search engines will also find it hard to track and store them, resulting in less of your content being visible to a wider online world. For example, this kind of link is a bad idea:
Instead you should seek to reduce it down to something more manageable, such as:
Unfortunately doing this usually requires a healthy knowledge of Mod_Rewrite or a similar URL rewriting service, which is extremely complex; hence it’s usually better to make sure that any dynamic scripts your site uses have already been built to output Search Engine Optimised (SEO) URLs. However, a simple .htaccess file example of Mod_Rewrite based on the above link might look like this (it gets progressively more complex later, search the Internet for tutorials):
In addition, if you ever have to remove a script then Mod_Rewrite can be used to redirect [R] any dead URLs to a new location. Likewise, once your links are sorted, you should consider building a simple sitemap file. Sitemaps contain all the major links on your site, sometimes including details such as the date last updated and link priority so that search engines can better index your site and see which are the most important sections. There are plenty of free online tools to help you do this or one can be built manually for smaller sites. For example, an extremely simple text based SITEMAP.TXT (place in your sites root folder) file might start off like this.. (just links on new lines):
Finally, don’t forget to make sure that you use an ALT description tag for any images you use. Search engines will also index these and it is important not to underestimate their value. 10. Market your site. It’s amazing how many developers get this one wrong and only add their page to search engines. There are a number of other things you should do, such as submitting your site to link directories (preferably with a Google PageRank [PR] of 3 or more). My personal favourite is this semi-free tool, which has a lot of free submissions, automates most of the work and also allows you to vary your sites title, description and keyword tags (i.e. too many repetitive details will get ignored by search engines as SPAM): It’s also worthwhile investigating your competition and or similar sites to see if they have link pages. Many do and if so then it’s worth requesting a reciprocal link (you post one to them, they post one to you) to help boost your visibility further. Likewise it doesn’t hurt to publicise the existence of your site through press releases and newsletters, which should again be sent to the e-mails of sites containing similar content. If you have access to newsgroups then find a related newsgroup category and mentioned it there too. However, during all this promotional work it is important not to over-advertise (SPAM) your page as that could become counterproductive and many people despite aggressive promotion. Finally, it could take nearly a year before some link directories recognise/add you, so don’t expect instance results. Building a readership takes time.
Have something to say? Check out the Host-Review.co.uk Forum
http://www.host-review.co.uk/forum |