So far in this series on SEO basics we’ve looked at things on your site that you can directly control, in this final part we’ll look at something you have very little control over, incoming links. These are links to your Web site from other Web sites.

Why are incoming links so important?

The main reason that incoming links are so important is that you have less control than anything you do directly on your site. In the past people used various ways to fool search engines into ranking their sites higher.

To stop this search engines needed a new way to rank sites, that site owners couldn’t cheat at so easily.

In 1998, Google started to use a new system called PageRank. The idea behind PageRank was that every time a site links to another site it votes for that site as being a good source of information. PageRank doesn’t just depend on the number of links though, it also considers the PageRank of the linking site. So the higher the PageRank of the page the more valuable the links from it are.

From the incoming links, Google calculates the PageRank of your site giving it a rating between 1 and 10. Due to the way the formula for calculating PageRank works each step up comes increasingly harder to achieve. Most small business Web sites won’t get a ranking above 3 or 4.

Due to the way the formula works, getting lots of incoming links from low PageRank sites doesn’t make much difference. It is much better to get a single link from a site with a high PageRank.

How do I get a link from a site with a high PageRank?

The best starting place is often getting a link from a big trade organisation. One of my clients is a sculptor and a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, who have a PageRank of 5 and offer links to members. So look for relevant organisations to your business who you can get to link to your site.

Government and higher education Web sites usually have a good PageRank, although they are hard to get links from (part of the reason they are trusted and have good PageRank).

The final place is from other highly respected sites. These sites often link to great content they find, so the first thing you need to do is write some great content and then shout about it to get their attention. Spreading the word via twitter is a great way to do that.

Nofollow, no votes

Right now you’re probably thinking; I bet facebook has a great PageRank, so I’ll post a link on my wall and get a link from facebook. Sorry it won’t work, facebook (plus many other sites, and most links from blog comments) links are nofollow. That means search engines should ignore the link and not count it as a vote.

Just because a site has a high PageRank doesn’t always mean the links from it are worth having. Before paying to join an organisation just to get a link from them always make sure the link isn’t nofollow.

So how do I know what the PageRank of a site is and if the links are nofollow?

There are a number of ways. But I use a Firefox plugin called SeoQuake. This gives you all sorts of information including PageRank and highlighting nofollow links.

Why don’t I get all my friends to give me links?

It sounds like a great idea, I’ll give a link to all my friends and then they can link back to me. Sorry but it won’t work (unless they happen to have related Web sites).

Google knows (or least thinks it knows) what the main subject of a site is, and it ignores any links to a totally unrelated site. So a link from your plumbing site to your friends book shop site won’t help at all.

Here is a great example of what you can do though.

If you were a wedding photographer with a blog, you can write a blog post for every wedding you shoot. That gives you great fresh content regularly. But if you mention other suppliers at the wedding (cake, flowers, reception venue etc.) you can then ask them for links back to your site. As they are a related business (wedding services) Google accepts these as genuine incoming links.

Think about ways you could create a similar blog with links for your own site.

Many people think that the design of a Web site’s layout comes first and the content just gets dropped into it. To be honest a lot of Web sites do get designed layout first and content second. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right way.

The concept of pages

We probably think this way because in traditional graphic design we know how big the page is. If we’re designing a brochure it’s usually A4 or A5 size.

The Web doesn’t work in the same way though, we don’t know how big the page is. In fact the whole concept of pages is actually artificial on Web sites. It’s just there to try and help us understand Web sites more easily.

People can look at our site on a variety of devices from smart phones with small (3 inch) screens to desktop computers with huge (27 inch) screens. Not only do we have to worry about size, but most smart phones and tablets can be used horizontal or portrait.

Responding to devices

Early in spring 2010, Ethan Marcotte published an article called Responsive Web Design. In the article Ethan talked about how the design and layout of a site could and should respond to the device it was being viewed on. This meant doing things like changing from a 3 column to a 2 column layout on smaller screens and even a single column layout on really small screens.

Responsive Web Design was an important step in the evolution of Web site design. But the evolution wasn’t over yet. We were still thinking about the page first and how to squeeze our content into it.

Designing from the content out

In January 2011 at the New Adventures in Web Design conference, Mark Boulton introduced us to his concept of a new canon for Web design. Mark suggested that instead of working from the canvas (or page) in we should should be designing Web sites from the content out. In his article A Richer Canvas, Mark goes into much more detail about this concept.

I believe he’s spot on. We need to make the design compliment the content, not just make something that looks pretty and pour the content into it without creating a relationship between them.

So that is why I ask for the content before designing the layout. I’ve always tried to get the content first but now I believe it’s more important than I ever have before. Instead of creating a good Web site, let’s build a great Web site.

What are headings?

Headings on Web pages are defined by using heading tags, these range from H1 (the main heading) down to H6 (the least important heading). Most pages will only go as far as H2 or H3. Headings are usually displayed larger (and often more bold) than body text, but should not be used just for display purposes. Headings should be used to give your page structure, so the main page title would be H1 (or heading 1) and each sub-section of the page would be H2. If you then further break up content under the H2 section, you would use H3 and so on.

You can use headings to help you plan your page content by starting with the heading structure and then adding the detailed content under each heading. Don’t use too many headings though as this can stop the flow of your text.

Most content managers should include formatting options to add headings, often labelled Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 etc. If you don’t have these options then ask your Web designer about how you can use headings.

Making your content findable

People very rarely read the whole of your page from beginning to end. Usually they are looking for a specific piece of information. Headings are a great way to break up the content on your page and act as sign posts to help people find what they are looking for.

Search engine benefits

Search engines know that headings should give structure to your content and so they take more notice of them than the standard body text. Good headings not only act as good sign posts for readers but also provide the important key words and phrases to search engines.

Don’t overuse headings though as each heading dilutes the effect of the other headings.

I think schools have a lot to answer for when it comes to poor Web site content. They encourage students to fill their essays with filler by giving minimum word counts and often the only other writing that students do is write science reports.

Most science reports start by outlining the experiment and giving information about what should happen, but doesn’t give a conclusion until the end. While this way of writing is fine for a science report, students often come away writing everything else the same. If this style is used on a Web site then it means that users have to read the whole page (or at least scroll through the whole page), to reach the conclusion. According to research done by the Nielsen Norman Group, only around 20% of users see 2 or more screens of information on each page. That means that on a page with a fair amount of information only 20% of users will see the conclusion if you leave it until the end.

Most newspaper articles on the other hand start by giving a summary of the whole story including the conclusion, then add more detail to the story as it continues. This means that almost all users will see the conclusion if they just want a simple answer and can continue reading if they want more detail. It also helps the user to know that they are in the right place as they can quickly see a summary of what the whole page is about.

Steve Krug in his book Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability goes as far as saying:

Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.

If people only scan Web pages, then most of what you write won’t be read. So why bother writing it?

Writing less means that only the valuable information is left and doesn’t get drowned out with useless noise.

Writing less

The first thing to remove is the filler text, the kind of thing that doesn’t really need to be there, but fills up empty space. On a portfolio page, do we really need

Here are some of the Web sites I’ve designed or developed lately.

It’s not as though our portfolio page is going to promote someone else’s work, so it’s just filler text.

The next thing is to remove redundant words:

• Don’t say the same thing twice (e.g. past history, careful consideration);
• Use 1 word instead of 2 (e.g. merge together, ongoing plan);
• Use 1 word instead of a phrase (e.g. apply instead of make an application)

We often try to use more words to impress people and make them think we are clever, but we impress them more when we are clear and concise.

Short paragraphs

Use 1 subject per paragraph.

The first 2 words should be important information carrying words so that readers scanning the text quickly know if the paragraph contains what they are looking for.

Short paragraphs break up the text better, allow white space and don’t give the reader a solid wall of text that’s hard to read. Shorter paragraphs are also easier to understand because people don’t have to process as much information.

If you use titles and headings that are not obvious then people have to think about what they mean. Usability expert Steve Krug‘s first law of usability is:

“Don’t make me think!”

To help people find the information they are looking for, we need to provide good information scent. If we make our titles and headings too clever and full of plays of words, then we don’t provide good information scent.

Helping people find your page

Page titles and headings are both considered important by search engines.

If you use meaningful titles and headings these will quite often contain the words that people will be searching for. Using relevent key words and phrases in your titles and headings help make your page appear more important to search engines, so your page will appear closer to the top.

Not only do search engines place importance on titles, they also use page titles to display search results.

How many times have you clicked on a link in a list of serach engine results only to find that the page has nothing to do with what you were searching for? If you make sure that your title describes the content of the page well then people will find what they are looking for and build confidence in trusting you. If they click on a link and the content does not match the content then instead they will lose confidence, beacause they were fooled into visiting your site.

Signposts for people reading the page

Providing good titles helps people to know they are reading the right page for the information they want. Good headings help people to find that information on the page.

Remember in Why is writing for the Web different?, we looked at how people read Web pages. Providing meaningful headings as signposts helps people to scan the page and find the section of the page with specific information they are looking for.

Why is highlighting key words and phrases important?

When people are trying to find information on a Web site, they usually scan the text looking for key words or phrases.

These key words and phrases either act as sign posts to a larger piece of information or can be important pieces of information themselves.

How to highlight key words and phrases (and how not to)

There are a number of ways to highlight text, some of the ways that you might highlight text in other places should not be used on Web sites.

Do highlight key words and phrases by using:

• bold text (this is sometimes called strong emphasis);
• numerals (e.g. 5) instead of words (e.g. five) for factual information (numbers help the text stand out among words);
• colour (but don’t use blue, see below for the reason why).

Italic text is often also used, however it can be harder to read. If you want to use it then I’d suggest no more than 2 words of italic text.

Don’t highlight key words and phrases by using:

• ALL CAPITAL LETTERS (using all capital letters is considered shouting and seen as rude);
• underlined text (underlining usually means that the text is a link);
• blue text (again blue text usually means that the text is a link).

Capital letters are not only considered shouting and seen as rude, capital letters are more difficult to read. When text is all in capital letters it takes people longer to read because the letter shapes are less distinct than lower case letters.

In fact people often ignore text in capitals altogether as Susannah Ross says in her book “Writing for the Web“:

The irony is that in text where writers put important information in capitals precisely to draw our attention to it, we tend to skip it.

Don’t highlight too many key words and phrases otherwise nothing stands out. Only highlight words and phrases that help people find the right part of the page to get the information they are looking for or important pieces of information.

Valuable content

The most valuable thing on most small business Web sites is to give customers and potential customers information about the business and what it does. Probably the most valuable pieces of content you can include are:

• What do you do (e.g. Web site design, selling flowers),
• Information about your product/s or service/s,
• How to contact you.

You could also use your Web site to add value for your customers providing them with additional support. If you included an FAQ section, it gives your customers answers to common questions when they want them. It also stops you from answering the same question time and again.

Another way of adding valuable content is by including useful articles and information for your customers related to your products and services. This blog is here to help promote my services, but also to provide useful content to keep people coming back and to tell their friends about.

Valuable content can also help your position in search engines. Creating useful content encourages other people to link to your site, making it look more important to search engines.

Keep adding fresh content

Just creating a site with valuable content that never changes will not keep people coming back.

Think for about TV, if your favourite program was on you would probably watch it. Now what if all it ever showed was the same episode over and over and never showed anything else? How many times can you watch the same episode of Top Gear on Dave?

The same is true of a Web site, no matter how good the information. If it never changes people will get bored and stop visiting it.

Some of the fresh content you can add to your site are:

• Articles and features,
• News (e.g. new products or services),
• Special offers (e.g. deal of the week),

Without valuable content people have no reason to visit your site again or recommend it to their friends. So whether you update your site everyday or just once in a blue moon make sure you have valuable content.

The best content is information about your products and/or services, after all that is what your Web site is there to promote.