Organizing Your Page Contents

All successful web pages have certain key components in place to ensure that all visitors (human and computer) can see what is on offer.

And this has nothing to do with the colours, fonts or even layout of the page. It is all about getting the information on the screen in the right order and making sure your message is transmitted no matter where the visitor looks.

So forget all about what it looks like for now, just make sure you have all the following in place on each and every page.

Introduce the Document

Page Title - the bit at the top of the browser

When you use a search engine, the first line of any result is the page title. If you are hoping to attract customers via a search engine, you need to write relevant page titles. And try to use proper sentences, it's more friendly:

Quick and easy chicken recipes from chickenshop.com

or

Self install water meters from bloggs.com.

But make sure you do it in less than 60 characters as that's all the search engines normally display. For more information on titles here an excellent article from seologic.com.

Description Metatag

It's the only metatag you really need to worry about. Keep it to a maximum of 200 characters and describe the contents of each page. Most search engines will use the description at some point during the indexing process. And you will often see it displayed on the results page for new web sites.

Main Header

Introduce the Page. Use the main header to attract the visitors - tell them what to expect.

'Welcome to my Homepage' is useless. 'Help and Assistance on Opening Doors' is much better.

The indexing robots use the main header to get a feel for the page, so don't waste the opportunity to get in a few keywords.

Introductory paragraph

No matter what sort of page you are building you should always have an opening paragraph. Again, you should introduce the subject and make sure you repeat the keywords used in the title and header.

Navigation

Keep it the same on every single page. Across the top, down the left or down the right. It doesn't matter too much as long as it is the same on every page.

Make sure you use text links rather than images for your navigation. Describe where each link is sending you - use your keywords again: 'Elephant Husbandry' is better than 'Husbandry'. And do not ever use 'Click Here'.

This page has a lot more Navigation Guidelines.

The Main Content

Essentially there are only three things you can have in your main content: text, images and multimedia. However you combine them is up to you but as always you need to provide some text to support the other two - it is a ideal opportunity to keep repeating those keywords, provide links to other pages and add a splash of colour to attract the eye.

Make sure you include 'alt' text for the images and have an alternative for those who can't see or use your multimedia.

Here are some more ideas for your content.

The Footer

The perfect place to repeat the main navigation links. Add your contact details and say goodbye. Sign off the page with a reminder of the page - use your title or header for inspiration so that it is the last thing anybody reads.

Summary:

Each page needs: a title, description, main header, navigation, introductory paragraph, content and footer.

Use each of these to promote your keywords, yourself, your services. If the visitor can't find what they want they will leave. All you need to do is follow the rules.

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