SEO tips for Glicnet CMS

Written by Fergal Donlon Fri Jan 06th 13:38 2012

A guide to adding content for Glicnet clients

(much of this is relevant to all sites however)

Page Content

• Give unique page titles to all your pages - you can do this through your CMS but if you don't know how email/call us and we will walk you through this.
• Place important keywords and phrases in your the title, <h1> (heading 1), and <strong> tags. Try to have your page set up so that the strong tag and headers be used to naturally emphasize important words, and not just keywords.
• Don't go crazy with page content! Long pages with lots of text may not have the desired effect since page load times will be affected. There are various tools to determine load times and the speed of your server will also be a factor.
• Content is King! While adding flash and lots of images may help esthetics, text will do more.
• Don't include text that is not relevant to your site. Good content that people want to read will be linked to more and the more links you have the better.

Keyword Phrases

• Obviously you should try to include keyword phrases as much as possible. Over-do this however and you could get penalised for keyword stuffing. Nonetheless as long as your site is human readable and not just a paste in of chunks of keyword phrase you should be able to get the desired effect.
• Have the phrase in the link - hence on this site I would have a link like Web Development Services rather than showing the link as http://www.glicnet.com/services.html
• Put alt tags on all images - when you insert an image you will be presented with an option to add the alt text - use keyword phrases here as alt tags are read by search engines.

Meta Tags

• Youy Meta Description should be between 70 and 160 characters - yes it takes time but try to have all your pages with unique meta descriptions. Meta tags are rarely used by Google anymore - the description tag only to display your site's description in the search results.
• Focus on what you want to do well on - including general words should be avoided. "Astro Turf runners" have a better chance of being found than "shoes".

Site/Page Structure

• Use header tags - on your CMS there is a drop down labeled "Format" and here you can select the heading you wish to use.
• Have the correct hierarchy for headings on your page - h1 tags for the page topic (ie. use only one per page), h2 tags for a topical headings, and h3 tags for sub-topical headings.
• Use <strong> tags to emphasize a page's keyphrase - in your CMS this is represented by making the text bold.
• Nothing too far away - users should be able to get to most or all or your site within 3 clicks of the home page.
• Each page should have one concept - if you find you are drifting into another subject/concept move it to another page. There may be a million similar pages like yours - stay focused on what makes your unique.
• Use keywords for linktexts that are present in <title> and <h1> tags
• Keyphrase tags (as in <h1>, heading1) should not contain more than 4-8 keywords (60-80 chars), as each additional word lessens the quality of a single keyword.
• Text links always work better - linking with an image/button is less effective. If Glicnet has built your site we will probably have included a text based navigation on every page.

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