Basics of Critical Website Components

There are a few key components that are critical to optimizing a site:

1. Titles, URLs and Other Meta Information
2. Site Accessibility
3. Site Layout

Titles, URLs and Other Meta Information

Some of the most over-looked aspects of websites, these three items play important roles in search engines determining the overall relevancy of your site and, in turn, your ranking. Properly using title tags (H1, H2 etc.) for example helps search engine spiders determine what key information exists on the page and allow you to target keyword phrases that may help you drive traffic to specific sections of your website. This can be coupled with proper meta information (meta tags and descriptions) that search engines can use to help track information within a page. While it may be true that meta descriptions may not play as much of a role in search engine results now as they did in the past they can still help drive traffic to your site if the description is relevant and increases click-throughs.

Good looking URLs can also play a good role in attracting and retaining visitors as well as helping you rank in search engines by increasing the keywords on page. Compare the two following examples:

Sony mylo Internet Devices

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=3711&SR=nav:shop:mp3_portable_elec:personal_communicators:ss&ref=http%3A//www.sony.com/index.php

Wal-Mart’s In-Store Free Samples and Trials

http://instoresnow.walmart.com/In-Stores-Now-Free-Samples-And-Trials.aspx

In the first example the long string of text in the URL is a dynamic URL that, while it may be useful for database queries, is not very user friendly. At a quick glance the website visitor does not know what page they are on nor could a search engine easily determine the relevance of this page to a user. In the second example, the URL is clearly laid out and is easy for a user to determine exactly where they are on the page and navigate accordingly. This is important to plan your site for from the beginning a site re-work later on to correct this can be both quite costly and time consuming.

Site Accessibility

Make sure that your site is fully accessible and working at all times. This means no broken links, no missing pages, no server downtime, and appropriate file sizes for each of your files. From a site visitor standpoint this means that your site is appealing to all visitors, they can easily load all items, and they can have an enjoyable experience on your site. From a search engine standpoint, excessive loading times can actually cause search engines to not index some pages on your site, while broken links may also stop some indexing from occurring. Should this happen your site may not fully rank for what you are targeting and as such your traffic will suffer significantly.
Make sure that all of your site content is accessible to search engines as well. Text and other items in picture format, for example, can not be searched for by engines and as such if it is not attributes a proper alt text you may lose traffic on key areas.

Site Layout

Finally, ensure that your site layout is managed properly in order to allow for both users and search engines to access all information on your site quickly and effectively. Information should never be buried more than two clicks away from your home page (or three clicks, in the case of larger websites). This helps ensure that the information is readily accessible to your viewers and helps ensure that all pages are indexed appropriately in all search engines. You can also make use of a sitemap and 301 redirects to make sure users and search engine spiders are directed to the proper location on your site rather than lost in outdated information. Finally, as a rule of thumb, make sure all information located on the website is laid out from broad/general information down to specific ideas. This both helps website visitors to locate information they are interested in as well as inform search engines that your site is highly relevant and on topic.

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