- Posted by acxede on August 14, 2008
Building a new web site with Office Live Small Business? Follow these tips to make it friendly to search engines:
-
Use Office Live's Built-in Site Name and Site Slogan instead of creating images for them. When you do so, Office Live renders them as <h3> and <h5> tags, which search engines attach importance to. If you use the custom header module, Office Live makes the values of these fields available in the xsl style sheets. Use those values if you can. If you can't (or don't want to) add your own <h3> and <h5> tags.
-
Give each page a meaningful title, preferably one that contains a keyword that you'd like to associate with the page. You might want to append or prepend your business name to each page title.
-
Add a description to the description meta tag. This description is what search engines display. Experts are convinced that the keyword meta tags don't matter any more but, for whatever it's worth, enter a couple of keywords that you'd like to associate with each web page.
-
Keep your site simple. Type your text directly into a zone whenever possible instead of using HTML modules. Don't use too many tricks, hacks, and workarounds, and don't add content to pages with JavaScript. Spiders can't see such content and therefore, can't index them.
-
Write good copy. Novice webmasters build web pages for spiders. Experienced webmasters, on the other hand, build web pages for people. If you write good copy, not only will your visitors find the information useful, the spiders will index the content better as well.
And here's a bonus tip. Don't read too many SEO tips on the web and try to incorporate them all in your web pages. A great deal of SEO advice on the web is dubious at best. Most tricks designed to fool the spiders don't work. In fact, they might prompt the spiders not to index your site at all. Remember, there's no way your site's going to land at the top of all searches. Just follow the basic principles listed above and let the spiders do their job honestly.