Zeald.com SEO Features

Zeald.com Websites & Search Engine Optimisation

Zeald’s software contains many features designed to be as search engine friendly as possible. It goes without saying that a site that cannot be found in Google or other search engines will not ‘work’!
And now Google have just changed all the rules with Google Panda. Read about how it might affect your ranking here

A high level of search engine optimisation (SEO) support is therefore a critical determinant of a successful web site. And the ability of your website developer to upgrade your website to meet the new criteria is essential - does your developer do that?

In addition to applying best international practice, some of New Zealand’s top SEO experts have evaluated Zeald’s software when they have worked on some of our clients’ websites. These experts have made many suggestions to improve Zeald’s systems, most of which have been adopted as enhancements.

Zeald’s SEO-friendly software features include all of the obvious ones, and also incorporate many more 'advanced' features that many others in the industry have not adopted. Companies who are evaluating different web site companies ought to treat the list of SEO-friendly features below as a check list. These include:
• The content management system is easy to use, which enables clients to easily create and edit content. This makes it as easy as possible for clients to test-measure-tune their sites, for continual improvement.
• XML automated sitemaps – in addition to the sitemap on the site that people can see, spiders such as Google crawling a Zeald site see an XML sitemap - www.meatcuisine.co.nz/sitemap.
• This is a computer-readable sitemap of the website that Google can use to make sure it reads every page of the site. Sites without automated site maps tend to score poorly in search engine saturation.
• Header tags are properly specified – H1, H2 etc – specifically designed for search engines.
• Search-engine-friendly URLs - (which use the page name) - this increases keyword density and really helps to guide to Google what the page is about. For example www.meatcuisine.co.nz/shop/Beef/Large+Export+Prime+Steer+Eye+Fillets.html
- in many content management systems this product might have been allocated a URL such as www.meatcuisine.co.nz/shop?sku=xx452.
• Cascading style sheets (CSS) for styling - for SEO to reduce too much styling code in the content.
• All the standard meta data can be specified by a client on a per-page basis
• Any page can have its search engine 'priority' set which is used by Google.
• Any link can be set to 'no follow' which tells Google to ignore it. This avoids diluting a page's page rank by having Google looking at irrelevant outgoing links.
• If a client doesn't want to set meta data for every page, they can 'template' it so that (for example) all product pages automatically receive the title: 'Cheap affordable <product name> - <product category> - Zeald.com'. This will be used for any product page that doesn't have a meta title set.
• Meta data falls back again so if none is mentioned for a page, the system attempts to determine the most relevant page title etc.
• Ability to specify keyword rich ‘alt text’ for images.
• Text-based automatically generated navigation (from the backend product / page trees) allowing all search engines to follow them. Having keywords in the link text also helps.
• We make best attempts to avoid duplicate URLs & broken links. If you rename a page, its URL changes (due to search engine friendly URLs). Any links used throughout your site (provided they have been set up correctly using the tools in the rich text editor & not just pasted in) will automatically be updated use the new URL. If by chance anyone is still using the old URL (e.g. bookmarks, links from other sites, pasted in links into copy on the site), the system issues a 301 redirect to the new page (which tells Google that the old pages has permanently moved to this new URL, so value from incoming links is still attributed to the new page).
• Clients can direct links from within the site to specific pages to make them more important for the search engines in relation to unimportant pages.
• Redirects - clients can setup ‘301 redirects’ for pages that have moved or changed – the Zeald system does this automatically when a customer moves a page in the CMS. Pages that are redirected contrary to the 301 protocol are penalised by search engines.
Zeald has expended significant effort to make its web sites support SEO above and beyond the requirements of most reputable SEO experts. This effort has been rewarded by seeing many of our clients topping search engine rankings.

One such site is the site www.timeandcharm.co.nz. This company worked with an SEO expert who offered advice on upgrading Zeald’s software. A search on Google, even using the international .com Google site search (which still biases NZ sites for someone searching in New Zealand, but also returns international results), reveals very high rankings in highly competitive search phrases:
• mens watches - #1
• ladies watches - #2
• gold charms - #1
• silver charms - #1
and so on. In most of the keywords they target, they are either #1 or #2.
A high ranking in a Google search is not achieved through luck. It results from a partnership between the web site company’s technology and client support systems, and the efforts of clients who take the trouble to write high quality content and then persevere with their sites, testing, measuring and tuning them to constantly enhance their performance.

See what Matt Cutts, a Google Engineer, has to say about website visibility on Google