By Nora McDougall-Collins
NNFP Director of Web Services
One of the elements to plan for your website is the text. Website text is much more than the paragraphs in the middle of the page. Planning ahead for each of the text areas of your website will help your readers’ experience and your search engine optimization.
Title Tags
Title tags are the words in the blue bar at the top of your browser window. These are one of the most important text areas that Google will use for your keyword cataloging. The title tag is also used as the line that people click to go to your website from Google. For example, if the title tag for the home page of http://nnfp.org is NNFP only, that doesn’t tell anyone much about the site. So, viewers are likely to choose to go to a different site.
Each page should have its own unique title tag that reflects the content of that page. Each title tag should take the following into consideration:
1. It should be true and accurate for that page, unless you want to be marked as a spammer by the search engines.
2. Keep it to 10 – 12 words. More than that won’t display well.
3. Don’t just make a list of keywords with commas. Make it interesting.
4. Don’t use words people will not type into a search engine. Reserve words like “biggest selection”, or “best deal” or “fantastic” for your used car ads.
Page Titles
A page title is different from the title tag in that it actually shows on the web page. A page title is shorter than a title tag because it’s one of the elements that helps people make sure they are on the page they want to visit. So, you have to be sure that people can read it in a glance. If your page titles are graphics, search engines won’t be able to get the words.
Text Links
Those clever buttons you want to use on your website don’t help your site be cataloged in Google. Google can’t read images, neither can people with visual disabilities. As often as possible use plain old text links and reserve your images for other areas of your web pages.
Page Copy
People won’t read a lot of words on your home page. Do you read all the words on every home page you go to? However, you should have brief text areas that lead people to click into your site. Think sound bites and headlines.
However, you should have great text on the inside pages. Once your viewers have reached the page they have chosen, they want some real content. They don’t want marketing mish-mash, they want meaty information. The search engines want the same thing.
This is another area where your keywords come in. Make a list of the words you want people to find you under and make sure that those words are in your content.
Alt Tags
These are coded captions for each of your inserted images. (For more information about inserted images go to http://www.thecomputergal.com/WebDesign/Tips/MisuseOfBackgroundImages.htm.) While the search engines can’t get or catalog any information from your images, they can get and catalog information from alt tags. When you give your developer images, each image should have a one sentence alt tag that describes the content and significance of the image.
File Names
Each web page on your site is at least one file. Each image is a file. Great file names will help your search engine optimization. Instead of homepagephoto.jpg, use HorseLogging.jpg or FourShelfBookcase.jpg. Notice that each word is capitalized to make it possible for a search engine computer program to pick out the words!
Conclusion
Go through your website, or your website plans, systematically for each of these items. It is very easy to think you did it, if you don’t document your work!
This article was first published on the NNFP Ning site.