SEO Article Series - SEO Website Positioning

These SEO articles are excerpted from an SEO article series on the search engine optimization considerations in website navigation, site architecture and website positioning. This SEO article on SEO Navigation goes along with SEO Web site Navigation and SEO in Site Architecture to complete the series.

SEO Website Positioning
by Valerie DiCarlo - VDC Enterprises, LLC

There are many different areas of website positioning to address when considering the search engine optimization of your site pages. We have listed just a few basic samplings below for SEO consideration in website positioning. More on this topic is also discussed on our SEO Blog post Usability and Website Positioning.

Content Optimization

Web site content uses a somewhat different approach than offline marketing content. There are many factors at play with web site content such as, searcher behavior, eye tracking, page position of content, keyword density ratio, how and where the keywords are placed, utilizing bold or italic - all important factors in content optimization.  Best practice SEO is that the content of your website, in combination with the meta tagging, is crucial to the development of high-quality web sites with the reward of high-quality search rankings.

The key is finding a proper balance between quality SEO-based content and how you treat and display this content.  If handled correctly, great returns can occur.  The following are some of the key techniques that should be implemented along with your content.

Page Headers and Headlines

Search engines read your page content in the same way the human eye reads - left to right and top to bottom. Search engines love content that appears in header tags (h1, h2, etc.) and view the content within these <h1> tags as vital to that page’s content relevance.  For best practice on-page SEO, it is important to position keyword rich <h1> header and headlines towards the top left portion of the web site page.

Consider the following techniques when designing your website:

• Define your header tags in your CSS and use the header tag for the headlines and secondary headlines of your content.
• Each page should have at least one H1 header tag.  This tag should be keyword rich and basically give a snapshot of what the page is about.
• H2 tags for section headers within the page can have a positive impact, as can the use of Bold (<b></b>), Strong (<strong></strong>), and Italics (<i></i>).

Copywriting

As mentioned previously, when placing content on your page, remember that spiders read like people. They go from left to right and from top to bottom.  They also assume that the most important information is located at the top of the page.  When reading specific tags (title, h1, h2, etc.) search engines value words to the left more highly than words to the right.

While keyword density is no longer a best practice SEO technique, it is important to note that the meta tags must coordinate and correspond with the content copy and the targeted keywords for a page MUST appear “naturally” in the copy. 

Another concept to consider is where the content is positioned on the site page. Because the search engines “read” from top left to right, it is important to place your content - with the targeted keyword phrases early (top left) on the page and “sprinkle” those targeted keyword phrases throughout the copy - through to the bottom.

Graphics

For stylistic reasons, many web sites choose to display page headings as graphics.  By so doing, they remove important words from their web pages. From the perspective of a search engine spider, a graphic is just a graphic and spiders won’t read them.  One option is to fill in the "alt" attribute in the "img" tag with keyword rich descriptions.  This attribute is a requirement for search engine accessibility and readability, but it won’t do much toward getting your page ranked well in a search engine.

Consider the following best practices in your design:

• Instead of using graphics of words, use real text.
• If you must use graphics in place of words, consider a form of CSS image replacement; the spider should still be able to access the text of your heading.
• The benefit of using text links as opposed to graphical images can’t be stressed enough. 
• Avoid graphic/image navigation and menus.