18 Domain and URL Best Practices for SEO

Place Keywords within URLs and Filenames

As URLs are typically one of the first things read by a search engine using keywords within them is one of the most consequential SEO details.

Maintain Your Website

If your website is hosted on a server that constantly crashes, or if you have pages that are blocked or no longer exist make sure you take the proper measures to maintain your website. When a search engine comes to index your website you want it up and running at its peak. Keeping your website maintained is the best way to do so.

Make Your Visual Media Search Engine Friendly

Use JavaScript Wisely

Using JavaScript to display content can add great features to your website. However, in the long run, it can also make content harder to be reached by search engines. When using JavaScript do so wisely and keep the code clean.

Make Use of Image <alt> Attribute

Text only websites are typically dull and image based websites are unrecognizable to search engines. Find a good balance between related content and images, and always make use of the image <alt> attribute. However do not keyword stuff the <alt> attribute as this will hurt your rankings.

Content is King!

Good Techniques

Use Original Related Content

The more original content (directly written for your website) you have on your website the better. This is for many reasons, however one of the most direct being, more content equals potentially more keywords and the more keywords the better the rankings.

Consistently Add New Content

Adding new content to your website is not only preferred by search engines but by users as well. (Blogs perform extremely well because of this.) Making minor updates to previous content is not considered as adding new content.

How to Make The Most of Your Meta Tags

Looking to jump to the top of search engines? Some people believe all you need to do is drop a few simple meta tags into your code and the rest is history. Truth be told, meta tags play a very minor role in determining search engine rankings. (Quite possibly no role at all depending on whom you talk to.) However this does not mean you should ignore your meta tags. Outlined below I recommend how to make the most out of some of the most popular meta tags.

<Description> Meta Tag

While meta tags are becoming of less value each day they are still important to include MSN and Yahoo!. Still play close attention to the <description> tag and often times the <description> tag will show up as the description of your site in search results.

Linking Advice - Internal, Inbound, & Outbound

Powerful Linking Strategies

Inbound Links Anchor Text

Any inbound link to your website is of benefit, however having bound links with the anchor text directly related to your keyword is the best. This is perhaps one of the quickest ways to obtain quick rankings.

Inbound Links Origin

Apart from having keyword anchor text, you want your inbound links to come from a creditable source and if possible a source with a decent Google Page Rank.

Maximize Your Keyword Efficiency

The Do's

Use Keywords within <title> Tag

The <title> tab is perhaps the most important place to have a keyword. The reason being, any text within the <title> tag shows up in search results as your page title. Keep your title short (7 words maximum) and use your keyword towards the beginning.

Use Keywords within URL

Keywords within your URL (www.shayhowe.com/seo/keyword-dos-and-donts/) are an added bonus. Repeat keywords from your URL in your document text for reinforcement. If at all possible use dashes ( - ) to break up words within your URL over underscores ( _ ).

Checkout Process: Designing Profitable Websites Part 6

The checkout process has become widely known over the years on the internet and making purchases online is fairly common for most households. With such popularity you would think the checkout process has been nearly perfected, however astonishingly 59% of all users abandon the checkout process. This could be for a number of reasons but the most important being users are not given a clear direction through the process. This leads users to get confused, frustrated, and abandon the process. Ideally an easier, friendlier, and dependable checkout process will do the trick and increase conversions.

Checkout processes are fairly dynamic and span across multiple pages. Making a change to one step may affect another. While designing a checkout process it is important that you take all of the steps into consideration and design the checkout process all the way through, not skipping any steps in-between. A few design suggestions to take into account include:

Acknowledge common checkout process goals.

While the checkout process is most commonly used for the exchange of money for goods or services, it can also be used to accept donations, take membership payments, or to even transfer money into a virtual equivalent. Make sure you know the primary goal and function of your checkout process.

Forms: Designing Profitable Websites Part 5

Forms are the biggest areas of abandonment on the internet. Reason being they are boring, ask for too many personal details, and are only a step toward the end. However much of the internet is widely based around forms including everything from login to contact forms and online purchase to social networking comment forms. All in all the more satisfying forms you design and the easier they are for users to complete the better results you will see.

Forms are supposed to be practical and serviceable, not an artistic expression. The main purpose behind designing a form is solving a problem including how to get users to input their information in the easiest way possible. It is not to say that forms should not be pretty, they should. It is all a matter of putting everything together. A few suggestions to follow when putting together a form include:

Acknowledge common form goals.

The main goal for any form is to be filled out and submitted. Different forms will have different specific goals, for example a newsletter subscription form has the primary goal of obtaining marketing information, especially an email address. Be aware of the forms broad and specific goals.

Detail Pages: Designing Profitable Websites Part 4

Finally, visitors have made it to the detailed page after working through the category page, or even better they came from a search engine. Either way now is not the time to relax conversion efforts, if anything, now is the time to put them into full effect. Getting visitors to commit to the process is the hardest part, however if you provide them with enough valued information including content, imagery, support, and desired call to action you are in good shape. Maintain your visitor's interest and seal the conversion.

Detail pages can easily make or break a sale thus making it critically important to keep these pages organized and maintain user attention, ultimately leading them to the conversion process. While working with detail pages take into measure the following:

Outline detailed goals and guidelines.

The ultimate goal behind any detail page is to get visitors to make a purchase, accept an offer, or to move forward in the conversion process. In doing so you typically want to outline products or offer details, clear any confusion, promote sales and specials, and possibly supply alternative conversion procedure.

Category Pages: Designing Profitable Websites Part 3

Category pages are often disregarded because cleverly produced ones are passed through almost immediately directing visitors to the desired product. Category pages are an important step in the conversion process as they are in charge of providing a brief overview of a large amount of items and furthermore providing a way to decipher the difference between all of the items. Ultimately they lead visitors to the detail page where the conversion is finally completed.

Category pages act as a critical link to the conversion process and clutter and confusing design can break the chain. A few simple measures to think about when working on a category page include:

Outline detailed goals and guidelines.

The ultimate goal of the category is to progress visitors to the detail page. In doing so visitors are going to look for a few things, including: Displaying items in a pleasing manner, supplying enough details to differentiate items, contribute a way to scan items by various specifications, and furnish a way to move to the detailed page or next step.