Pleasure, glad you found it useful:
Google keyword tool:
Link
This is useful for setting up the descriptive footer links and extra pages I mentioned above,
it gives you an idea on what people are searching for helping you in deciding the content to include in your links and pages.
You can either enter your own keywords or the url of your site which it will scan and return with the relevant keywords/phrases.
Another thing I just thought of are 301 redirects.When you or your client change their mind on a page's name, say they want to change 'green_cabbages.php' to 'blue-cabbages.php' or remove the extension so it looks tidy, or whatever, it is imperative that you set up a 301 redirect.
This tells search engines that the old page stored in their index exists at a new location and that they can delete the old link from their index.
This keeps all rankings—or whatever the search engine uses to rate your pages—intact.
It didn't occur to me at first but Google and other search engines keep all those old pages and old links stored unless told otherwise: the 301 redirect does this.
If like me you are messy you may leave old files on your server - those old files are still being indexed. When people click them - they may be served a page that is old, irrelevant or one that could even break your site in some way, leading to a big wtf? from the user and they may go and find an alternative site.
Use site:your_site.co.uk in the search input to see all the pages Google has indexed on your server.
So
- Delete old, unused files from your server, remember that search engines will be indexing everything (unless specifically told not to);
- If you have created an alternative page or changed site structure make sure to 301 redirect to the new page/directory;
- Check all indexed files with site:your_site.co.uk in google and sort problems;
- Check the status of your headers and verify that they are the correct ones: Link, 400s for client error, 500 for server errors 300s for redirects, 200s are okay.
If you are changing, improving or restructuring an existing site
Use 301 redirects from the old pages to the new pages to keep the old pages rankings/ratings
. Even if a new page doesnt exist from the old structure redirect to something that's nearly relevant
.
Plus another thing is adding a Google map to your site
Adding an interactive Google map in the contact page helps boost local search results too:
Google Maps API - Google Code
This can get your site included in the local business results listings at the top of the results page.
