Search Engine Optimization

SiteCrafting believes in providing information, tools and strategy to help website administrators effectively and efficiently manage their site’s visibility in search engine results.

What You Should Know
 
  • Websites do take work. Successful sites require attention which, as a byproduct, increase your search engine exposure.

  • There is no mysterious search engine formula or advantage. If it sounds too good to be true, it likely is. Short term tricks and gimmicks are not replacements for a long term strategy.

  • There are simple things that any website administrator can do to maintain optimal search engine rankings.
 one sheet button

    Below are some simple guidelines for content and html optimization:

    Title Keywords
    • Titles are one of the more important items that search engines pay attention to, so use that tag for loading up page titles with quality keywords that will be relevant to searchers.
    • Keep keywords relevant to each page’s content in order to to target different searches. 
    • The best practice is to keep the length of the entire title under 70 characters, including any page titles generated by a CMS.
    Meta Keywords
    • Meta keywords are not visible by the visitor, but they are visible to search engine bots. 
    • The meta keyword field is not as important as it used to be for search engines, so there isn't a best practices rule for limits to the number of characters you can use.
    • Be sure not to go overboard with meta keywords, as search engines may consider it spam.
    Meta Descriptions
    • Meta descriptions are not visible by the visitor, but they are visible to search engine bots.
    • The meta description field is best described as a synopsis of the content that's on the page.  It can be something as simple as the first couple of sentences of content on the page.
    • It is important to craft the descriptions so they have quality keywords and are relevant to the content on the page. 
    • Best practices indicate no more than 155 characters for a page's meta description.
    Page Content
    Simply focusing on good page content is a large part of a successful SEO strategy. Be sure to consider the following when assessing current content layout and creating new content for your site:
    • Use a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
    • Pages should include relevant keyword rich content. Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
    • Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. Search engine crawlers don't recognize text contained in images.
    • Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
    Web Statistics
    Be sure that you have access to your website's statistics. This typically is a log of information on visitor activity, traffic sources and popular content. Website statistics provide a wealth of information on what website visitors find relevant on your site as well as to what keywords generate the best search engine result visibility.

    Google Webmaster Guidelines
    Become familiar with Google Webmaster Guidelines, paying special attention to the Quality Guidelines. Knowing what Google considers as quality content can help you  with the modification of your existing content, as well as the development and structure of any new pages you create.

    Should I Outsource SEO Management?
    There are firms that specialize in Search Engine Optimization that are reputable, but essentially they are performing the work outlined above. You should not need to pay for on-going maintenance of these items if you are willing to take a proactive approach to content and developing relationships that lead to links back to your content. If you are using our content management system then clean, optimized code (including sitemaps, etc) is dynamically generated and always up to date.

    We're happy to discuss your specific SEO needs. If you'd like to learn more about how SiteCrafting can help you, please fill out the contact form below:

    Name:
            

    Company:


    Email:
             

    Phone:


    Website:


     Tell us about your SEO goals/needs: