Credit union strategic planning, process improvement and SEO.

In the article, Keyword Research, we selected keywords. Now it’s time to apply them to your web pages, and optimize your site. As search engine crawlers index your website, they find your keywords which can later be matched to a search query. Search engine optimization is about making small changes to parts of a website. Individually, the changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on the site’s performance in organic search results.

Target Keywords in Page Content

This is one of the biggest items in ranking well! Without relevant content that mentions your target keywords, you will not rank well. This means creating well-optimized content that mentions keywords frequently without triggering spam filters.

In the article “Are Credit Unions Search Friendly?”, we noted that 49 of the top 100 credit unions had a Google PageRank on their home page of a “greybar”, or no ranking. After reviewing a number of these sites, the home pages of the “greybars” are clunky pages full of images (search engines can’t see these), and say very little. For a page to rank well, you should have well-written copy that incorporates your keywords. Most credit union marketing and web development people do not create pages with this in mind. Thus, the home page has loads of images, and says nothing. Many organizations hire specialists to write the content for their website, to ensure the page is well optimized for search engines.

HTML Meta Tags

Meta tags are the information inserted into the “head” area of a web page. Most of the information (other than the title tag) is not seen by those viewing your pages in a browser (they can be seen by clicking “view” and “page source”).

· Title tag <title>. The page title should only include your main keywords. The least amount of words you can place in the title, the more weight Google will give to each of the keywords and higher you will rank. When creating a page title, it should not look like this, “Welcome to our Website!” A better tag might be: <title>Mortgage loan refinance | how to get a mortgage<title>. Notice that “and” is replaced with a “|” character. Always combine your keywords when possible and cut down on the total number of words that are in the title.

· Header tag <h1>. In the <h1> header tag , place your most important keyword there. The <h1> header tag should be as far towards the top of the page as possible. When Google reads a webpage, it views from the top left hand side of the page to the bottom right hand side of the page. Next, create the <h2> header tag and place the second most important keyword in the tag.

· Meta Description tag. Google ignores the meta description tag and instead will automatically generate its own description of the page. However, the meta description tag can influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag.

· Meta Keywords tag. Most crawlers now ignore this tag. If you already have one, it probably doesn’t hurt. Otherwise don’t worry about this tag at all.

<alt> Image Tags

Failing to include a descriptive Alt text with images is to miss out on another place to optimize your pages. Search engines can not simply “take a look” at your images and understand the content there. They can only see the Alt text. For example, if you have an image on your webpage called picture1.jpg, the code would look something like this:

If we were to add an alt image tag called “mortgage loan refinance” the tag would look like:

Bold, Italicize and Underline

Once you have finished writing the copy, go through and bold, underline or italicize some of the keywords only one time each, maximum. Only do one per keyword or it will hurt you more than it helps.

Site Navigation

One of the best ways to determine what your site looks like to a search engine crawler is to view pages in a browser with images and JavaScript disabled. The Firefox browser has an plug-in called “Web Developer Toolbar” that adds this capability. If after turning off images and JavaScript you aren’t able to make sense of your pages, it is a good sign your site is not optimized well for search.

A common mistake in website design is to use images for navigation. It will basically render your site navigation useless to a search engine crawler.

Historically, search engines have not been able to index text/content within a Flash file. While Google has begun to roll out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine, you may want to consider using Flash content sparingly.

Put a HTML sitemap on your site, and use an XML sitemap file. A simple sitemap page with links to all your pages on your site can be useful. Creating a XML sitemap file for your site helps search engines discover all the pages on the site.

Lastly, make sure you check your site for broken links. A good, free tool is Xenu.

While onpage website optimization will make small changes in your ranking, it will probably not help your site make dramatic jumps in ranking. It is offpage optimization factors that will get you high rankings. In the article, Growing the Site’s Popularity, we will cover these techniques.

To obtain a free credit union SEO assessment, click here.