Australia SEO Best Practice

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an important component of internet marketing. Here are some basic best practice techniques you should follow.

Create accurate, unique page titles

• The title tag is in between the head tags of the HTML
• Page titles should be unique and descriptive of the page contents
• Include the most important keywords for that page
• Most search engines only read about 60 characters in titles

Include unique and descriptive meta descriptions

• Each page should have a unique meta description
• Include the same keywords as in page title and other important page keywords
• Should be an accurate description of the page contents
• Most search engines read only about 160 characters of a meta description

Use keywords in image alt tags

You should place keywords in your image alt tags while maintaining relevance to the content of the image. Google uses alt tags when determining web search sort order and also when determining image search results.

Use text links for site navigation menus

Text based navigation links makes it easier for search engines to crawl your pages, helping you get more pages indexed. Avoid Flash and JavaScript menus.

Use both a HTML site map and XML sitemap

Using both a HTML sitemap and XML sitemap will help search engines find all your pages. Place a link in the footer of all your pages to the HTML sitemap. Upload your sitemap XML to your home directory and let Google know where to find it through their Webmasters Tools.

Think about keywords before you write your web copy

Before you write your web copy, think about what potential customers might put into search engines to find your goods or services. Google Adwords has a useful research tool for this. Don’t forget to include geographical terms. Your most important keywords should be in your page titles. Your most important and secondary keywords should be in your meta descriptions. All your keywords should be used within the first paragraph of your page. Include keywords in your image alt tags.

Pages should load fast

Now that Google takes page load times into account when determining search results, its even more important than ever that your pages load fast. Compress images and use server side caching.
hint check your pages on a dial up connection, if it takes more than 15 secs to load, its too slow for general pages. Remember to clear the browser cache before reloading pages otherwise your results won’t be an accurate impression as data will load from the browser cache rather than from internet.

Need help optimising your website for search engines?

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Tags: australia, internet marketing, SEO