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There are many factors that determine how well a page ranks in search engine results. The foundation for those rankings rests solely on the quality of your website. It is most important to have a high-quality website built, than anything else. We’ve compiled a few tips for you to take into consideration both when building a website and after your website launches.

Avoid Flash: While Flash can have dazzling effects and stunning transitions, it does absolutely nothing for your SEO. The search engine robots (who crawl your site) can’t see any of the text or images within the flash. Flash is like a big sign that reads to search engines “IGNORE THIS CONTENT, NOTHING’S HERE”. If you really want to use flash, use it sparingly and understand nothing that is a part of that flash file will be read by the search engines. There are many ways around flash. We, for example, use modern technologies like AJAX and jQuery instead of flash to recreate the dazzling effects without putting a damper on your SEO.

Avoid Text as an Image: Following suit with the tip above, if you have text that is an image, the search engines can’t read it. The only part of the image they can read is what is in the ALT TAG.  Wherever there is an image, you should be sure to add an “ALT” tag, which allows you to include a keyword-rich description of the image that is readable by the search engines.

Page-Specific META Tags: We’ve seen it 100 times. Somebody picks 15 keywords for their website, and uses them over and over on every page. It’s very important, and we can’t stress the word very enough, to make sure each and every page has meta tags specifically for that page they’re on. Google and the other search engines want to see the title, keywords, and description in the content of that page. The more relevant the META tags are to THAT page (not your website in its entirety) the better rankings that page will achieve. We realize this is a time consuming matter to do properly, but it is one that should be ranked of high priority.

Unique Content: This is a factor that slips under the radar on a frequent basis. Many people think it will save time and cut corners from having to type out content on generic information about their companies’ services and products. While this is true, it WILL save time, it will also cut corners, and it will cut corners on your SEO results. When Google/Yahoo/Bing, start to see content over and over, they do a few things. 1) They Flag it. They say something’s going on with this content that all these websites are talking about the same thing and they lower its’ importance.  2) They rank you lower.  Search engines don’t want to see the same thing over and over. They would rather have it broken down 100 different ways, so that they can provide better and more accurate results to their visitors. The best sites are those that take time to explain things in detail and provide as much information as possible.

Use Headings and Sub Headings: Back in high school, you learned the importance of titles. Titles (Headings) play a vital role in your website. Header Tags such as H1, H2, and H3 show the importance of different content areas.  For example, H1 should be used to describe the main content area (on this page, it would be Five Steps to Take To Make Your Website SEO Friendly). H2 Tags are used to point out the titles of content within that page (on this page, for example, would be Unique Content, Use Heading and Sub Headings, etc). H3 tags would be used if those H2 content areas had content areas within it. It’s very important to make these headings and subheadings different sizes. It’s important not only for the search engines to crawl the site and see what content has what importance, but for your visitors as well, to see the different content areas and establish a good flow of content for the eyes to follow.

Our Rochester SEO team at Basch Solutions, LLC - a Rochester NY Web Design and Web Development company - has been optimizing websites and making them SEO-friendly since 1999. Whether it's in the beginning phases with building the website, the middle stages of optimizing the website, or the final stages of managing a PPC (Pay-per-click) campaign, we're here to help you find your way!

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