Page Optimization

When it comes to search engines, content is king. The more often you update your content and the more rich in keywords your content is, the better you will be found.

The problem is that many web developers simply don't understand some of the basics. Pages need to  be optimized... not just the site. What this means is that rather than looking at your site as a whole and trying to get all the keywords you can on all the pages, optimize your document management page for document management and your printers page for printers.

You need to make sure that you do everything you can to build in ways for the search engines to understand that you are relevant to your readers.

Here are the three key secrets that you need to make sure that you adhere to when building your site... and your pages. They are in no particular order.

Title

I am surprised how often I find that people have forgotten to add a title to their pages. A title is such a simple thing and search engines look at the title.

For example, Your home page should have the name of your company followed by some slogan of some sort. You can say something like "Superior Office Systems | Boise, Idaho's Office Equipment Supplier."

Even your sub pages should have different titles. You can say something like "Multifunction Systems | Superior Office Systems."

This is golden information. Don't use jargon or abbreviations. Try to use text that people will search on. Be willing to change it if it doesn't get you found. Keep it to less than 70 characters including spaces.

URL Path

The path of your pages is a great way to have the search engines know where they are. Don't fall into the trap of trying to simplify your URL with abbreviations, numbers and random letters. It actually makes them harder. Use all lower case. Don't make them too long.

For example, you don't want to have a URL pat that says http://www.example.com/id=667Ab/77887. First of all, how do you send people there over the phone. Second, how is Google supposed to know what page that is?

Try, instead, http://www.example.com/printers_and_mfps/multifunction_systems.

Make it human readable with the underscores. Make the words make sense. I wouldn't go much deeper than 3 levels if you can avoid it. Even on this blog, I tend to push the url path just a little more than I would do on core site content for my dealers.

Meta Description and Tags

Okay, so I have talked about this a couple of times before. Some experts say that this is not as critical as it once was, but I disagree. The description is what Google returns on their search pages. Each page should have its own description and its own meta tags. Each page should be able to stand on it's own in the world of search because you never know where people might choose to enter a page.

Make sure to keep your description to less than 150 characters including spaces. Keep your tags to 10 or less. Of course, if you need to go longer on occasion, you can, but do your very best to keep within these limits. Also, avoid repeating words.

Corey Smith is the webmaster for CopierCatalog.com.

He also is the Chief Web Architect for Dealer Marketing Systems, the Editor in Chief for OfficeProductNews.net and provides a common sense approach to business and technology on his blog.

You can find him on Twitter, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn.