There are 2 ways to look at today’s subject

1. The physical structure of your site
2. The way you use that structure

And in this installment we are going to briefly look at both.

Yesterday we looked at your keywords and the types of keywords that you should use having digested that here are a few further tips as to how use them in the meta tags discussed yesterday.

Title Tags

Google: 62 characters or less
Yahoo: 112 characters or less
MSN: 70 characters or less

• Write title tags that grab attention
• Do not repeat any words
• Keep keywords closer to beginning of title
• Keyword proximity important
• Use proper grammar
• Long title tags seem to dilute keyword density
• Shorter titles tend to rank better
• Title tag should target your audience
• Use title case or proper case
• Never use the same title tag twice
• Stop words and punctuation ignored: the, is, of, a,
• Never more than one title tag per page

Meta Description
Use your keyword in the meta description.

Body Text
The first priority is to write content that is engaging, informative, and useful to your audience. That rule takes priority over everything else. After you’ve developed your copy, consider optimizing your content with the following recommendations:

• Use at least 250 to 350 words of clean, grammatically correct sentences
• Use strong tags (rather than bold tags) – preferably on keywords

Keyword Usage

• Keyword density should stay under 3% typically
• Distribute keyword phrases throughout the content – more keyword prominence at top
• Use keyword in bold or strong tag
• Use keyword in URL if possible

Linking

• Link pages together using keywords as anchor text
• Anchor text should be surrounded by copy whenever possible
• Anchor text should not exceed 5 words
• If linked page is not related to content – use “rel=nofollow” attribute

Image Tags

• Alt tag should be meaningful to what the image is
• Alt tags are a great way to add keywords to your page
• Keep alt tags short
• 3 to 4 words – no more than 7 (Matt Cutts (Google))
• Use keyword in an image tag if possible and relevant
• Only use keyword in tag if appropriate
• Buttons or images that convey no content can have no alt tag

Every website needs to have good website architecture not only to ensure that search engine spiders crawl the website effectively, but also to provide users with a good experience by improving navigation and accessibility.

Anyhow, back to site architecture, a common phrase is “flat”, how flat is your site?  This means what is the maximum number of links that a user will have to click on before they arrive at the information they are seeking.  IN simple terms the flatter your site the better.  Typically try and keep all pages within 3 clicks.

e.g.

• Home
  • Some content
    • Sub content for content

Organise the information on your website into different themes or categories, these categories could then be subdivided and routed to subfolders. The internal link structure of the website should enable the user to reach any page within three clicks.

Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keywords, placing the top-level links for these categories on your homepage.  Make it easy for your users – it will also make it easy for search engines to crawl your pages effectively without having to crawl deeply.

Ensure that most of your important pages are linked from the homepage.

Create a sitemap; make sure that it is linked from the homepage helps users find a way to navigate through the website easily. Include keywords in these links on the sitemap that point to the various pages.

If you are planning to develop your website using frames, Flash, Ajax etc.be aware that these could be deterrent to both users and search engines.  At least make sure that none of your links are embedded within JavaScript’s, Ajax, Flash or Images.

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Internet marketing, Search engine optimization