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Provided below are tips for improving your website and content for the Google Site Search (GSS) engine. These tips are excerpts from "Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008" (the latest version at Google Webmaster Central) and have been modified for OmniUpdate users.
These tips align with best practices for any website content development.
Create Unique and Accurate Page Titles
A title tag indicates to both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. When using OmniUpdate, this title tag is created automatically when you create and name a new page. Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on your website.
Good Practices for Page Titles
- Accurately describe the page's content - Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page's content.
- Create unique title tags for each page - Each of your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your website.
- Use brief, but descriptive titles - Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.
Avoid
- Using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1."
- Using a title that has no relation to the content on the page.
- Using a single title across all of your website's pages or a large group of pages.
- Using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users.
- Including unneeded keywords in your page description.
Make Your Site Easier to Navigate
The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly locate the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important. Again, this is a feature that would have been set up in the early design of your website. As your website's purpose and content evolve over time, you may feel the need to make adjustments to the standard navigation [right-side navigation] or quick links. This type of adjustment needs to be coordinated with a support person at Web Services.
Offer Quality Content
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors enumerated here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, e-mail, forums, or by other means. Organic or word-of-mouth "buzz" is what helps build your website's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.
Good Practices for Content
- Write easy-to-read text - Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.
- Stay organized around the topic - It's always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster.
- Create content primarily for your users, not search engines - Designing your site around your visitors' needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.
- Use relevant language - Think about the words that a user might search for to find your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic. For example, a senior student might search for [dds], an acronym for Dartmouth Dining Services, while a new student might use a more general query like [dining]. Anticipating these differences in search behavior and accounting for them while writing your content (using a good mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results.
- Create fresh, unique content - New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.
Avoid
- Writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes.
- Dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation (page structure).
- Rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users.
- Having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your website.
- Embedding text in images for textual content (users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it).
- Inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines, but is annoying or nonsensical to users.
Format "Headings" in Your Content Appropriately
Headings are used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of headings available to use in formatting your content, Heading 1 through Heading 6. In OmniUpdate, Heading 1 is reserved for the page title and occurs automatically when you assign your page a title. Heading 2 designates the next item in the hierarchy of importance, and so on, ending with Heading 6 as the least important. Since heading tags typically make text contained in them larger than normal text on the page, this is a visual cue to users that this text is important and could help them understand something about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes used in order create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document.
Good Practices for Headings
- Imagine you are writing an outline - Similar to writing an outline for a large paper, put some thought into what the main points and sub-points of the content on the page will be and decide where to use heading tags appropriately.
- Use headings sparingly across the page - Use heading tags where it makes sense. Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for users to scan the content and determine where one topic ends and another begins.
Avoid
- Placing text in heading tags that would not be helpful in defining the structure of the page.
- Using heading tags where other tags like <em> and <strong> may be more appropriate.
- Erratically moving from one heading tag size to another.
- Excessively using heading tags throughout the page.
- Putting all of the page's text into a heading tag.
- Using heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure.
Optimize Your Use of Images
Images may seem like a straightforward component of your website, but you can optimize your use of them. All images can have a distinct filename and "alt" attribute, both of which you should take advantage of. The "alt" attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason. In OmniUpdate when you upload an image to the production server you are presented with a field to include an "alt" attribute.
Why use this attribute? If a user is viewing your website on a browser that does not support images, or is using alternative technologies, such as a screen reader, the contents of the alt attribute provide information about the picture.
Good Practices for Images
- Use brief, but descriptive filenames and "alt" (alternate) text - Like many of the other parts of the page targeted for optimization, filenames and alt text are best when they're short, but descriptive.
- Supply alt text when using images as links - If you do decide to use an image as a link, filling out its alt text helps Google understand more about the page you're linking to. Imagine you're writing anchor text for a text link.
- Use commonly supported filetypes - Most browsers support JPEG, GIF, and PNG image formats. It's very important to have the extension of your filename match with the filetype, as there can be display problems if they are not.
Avoid
- Using generic filenames like "image1.jpg", "pic.gif", "1.jpg" when possible (some sites with thousands of images might consider automating the naming of images).
- Writing extremely lengthy filenames.
- Stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences.
- Writing excessively long alt text that would be considered spam.
- Using only image links for your website's navigation.