There are tons of bullet point items on the proverbial SEO list, but one item in particular stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of its overall effectiveness.
This key SEO component is so powerful because it serves both search engines and people. Oftentimes, we become so involved in site building details that we lose sight of the ultimate truth here—search engines, without people, are basically useless.
So, how can you give the search engines killer juice and provide something captivating for the end user at the same time?
By constructing dynamic, descriptive <title> tags for each page of your site.
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As a Webmaster, one of the things you always need to be aware of is how well your the pages of your site are interlinked. This is a crucial factor in overall search engine performance, and simply assuming that your architecture is robust enough to handle this is definitely not the route you want to take.
Over time, you will likely accumulate tons of pages, and as this happens, the odds of certain pages getting buried to the point of becoming nearly inaccessible tend to go up.
To combat this, you can generate an XHTML sitemap that contains links to every page of your site.
Update: I no longer recommend or use an XHTML sitemap, and that’s why I’ve removed the sitemap links from this article. Search engines and technology have improved, and at this point, an XML sitemap is the way to go.
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So you’re not sure if your site is really getting indexed like it ought to. You’ve got a couple of options here. You can:
- Hope for the best :)
- Do something about it!
Experience has taught me that relying on hope to generate results is about as effective as trying to get in shape without lifting a finger.
And since we don’t have a magic pill here, I think it’s best that we try something we know will help our site get indexed by our friends at Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
Today, you’re going to strike up an ongoing conversation with the search engines by adding an XML sitemap to your soon-to-be-awesome Web site. [click to continue…]
Ever since I launched the new design here at Pearsonified, I’ve had the opportunity to learn about the little website tweaks that can make all the difference in things like:
- Search engine rankings
- Traffic
- Reader participation (comments and trackbacks), and
- RSS and email subscriber numbers
One thing that these little tweaks have in common is that they tend to be extremely easy to implement, especially if you already have a bit of experience under your belt. Another, more unfortunate thing that they have in common is the fact that they are not as widely known or practiced as they ought to be!
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