|
When potential visitors search on a search phrase
on the search engines, the search engines will list websites
according to how important and how relevant the websites appear
for the search phrase entered. Websites that do not appear
high in the list returned by the search engines stand little
chance of being visited.
Over 80% of Internet traffic comes from the search engines,
so getting your site high on the lists of websites returned
by search engines is vital if your website is to work for
you and attract new potential customers.
In order for your website to achieve a high search engine
position it needs to be tuned for relevant search phrases.
Below we have listed some tips to help you achieve those high
positions that are so vital if your website is to work for
you and bring in new business.
If you prefer, we offer various website search engine optimisation
services. To find out more visit our Search
Engine Optimisation pages.
Once you website is optimised for the search engines we can
also offer a professional search engine submission service.
To find out more visit our Search
Engine Submission pages.
Search Engine Optimisation Tips
|
Do not spam the search engines
|
| |
Search engine spamming occurs
when tricks are employed to boost a websites ranking that
the search engines consider to be cheating. Examples include
repeating a keyword over and over in the meta tags, using
the same coloured text as the background to add keywords
without them showing on the page, using external "doorway"
pages that are highly tuned for individual search engines
and automatically redirect visitors to the main site.
Search engines can hand out a harsh punishment to websites
they deem to be spamming. If a search engine considers
a website is spamming then at best it will be placed lower
in the search results than it would otherwise, and at
worst it may be banned from being listed on the search
engine ever again.
Whatever else you do, don't spam search engines, you may
not get the chance to make amends. |
Use different tradesman's entrances for the search
engines to enter your site with
|
| |
Many people think that the home
page of a website is the one that the search engines rank
your website on. This is not the case, your website probably
consists of many pages, and all these can be indexed by
the search engines. Many search engines "spider"
a whole website and will index each page automatically,
those search engines that don't index a whole website
usually allow individual pages to be submitted for inclusion.
To try and get a website ranked well on all the search
phrases people might use from one page would be impossible,
so treat each page as a tradesman's entrance for particular
phrases might be use, and tune that page for those phrases
only.
An example would be if your business sold Widgets, and
you had a page on your website describing the Widgets
you sold, then tune that page for search phrases people
might use to find Widget information. You might tune for
search phrases of "cheap Widgets", "quality
Widgets", "Widget resellers" etc. We show
you later how to find the actual phrases people are using
on the search engines, as opposed to guessing what people
will use. |
| Meta Tags |
| |
Meta tags are tags containing
information that most search engines utilise in deciding
what are the important search phrases for that page, they
also contain information that some search engines use
when displaying the results from a search. Meta tags are
an important element in getting your site ranked highly
on the search engines, but they are not the Holy Grail
that many people imagine they are when it comes to search
engine positioning.
Meta tags are used in varying degrees by the search engines.
Some search engines place a great deal of importance on
the contents of the meta tags, some search engines place
little importance on them, but what is very important
is that the contents of the meta tags should reflect the
contents of the page, putting words and phrases in the
meta tags that are not relevant to the page contents will
not get the page ranked highly on that phrase, but may
have a detrimental effect on the phrases that are relevant. |
| |
Title Meta Tag |
| |
Choose your words for the title
meta tag very carefully. What you put in this meta tag
is displayed in the top bar of you visitors browser. For
example, the Title meta tag for this page contains just
"Search Engine Optimisation", and that is what
appears in the top bar of your browser. This is also the
description that will appear when visitors add your page
to their Favourite's list.
Most search engines also display this as the main title
when they list the results of searches, so what you put
in this meta tag could influence visitors to click through
to your site, or not. Make it fairly short but describe
the contents of the page.
Many search engines also use the contents of this tag
as a part of determining the position of your website
in the search results. The contents of this tag should
be relevant to the page contents and any key words or
phrases for that page should ideally be used in this tag,
this adds relevancy to the words or phrases. |
| |
Description Meta Tag |
| |
This meta tag also appears on
the results listing of many search engines, so again,
try and use a description that will entice people to click
on the link and visit your page.
As in the case of the title meta tag, search engines use
the contents of the description meta tag as part of the
process of determining your websites position in the search
results returned. So again, make sure you use key words
and phrases that are relevant to the page in this tag.
|
| |
Keywords Meta Tag |
| |
This is the most
abused and misunderstood meta tag. Many people think that
by cramming keywords important to a page into this meta
tag will get the page ranked highly. This is not the case,
and many search engines consider "keyword stuffing"
as spam.
Only use keywords and phrases that are relevant to the
page, adding a keyword or phrase to the Keyword meta tag
that is not relevant to the page will not get the page
ranked highly on that keyword or phrase.
Don't use too many keywords and phrases. The more you
use the less significant each one becomes. Again, if your
business sold Widgets and you mention the word Widget
4 times in your Keyword meta tag and had a total of 20
words in the tag then it would have a weight of 20%, a
pretty significant word in the eyes of the search engine.
If there were 100 words then it would have a weight of
only 4%, not very important is how the search engine would
see it then. Don't use too many words but make the ones
you do use very relevant to the page contents.
Use the important keywords for your page early on in the
list, keywords higher in the list are deemed to be more
important by the each engines. |
We have a meta
tag generator, please remember the above when filling
it in.
Visit our Meta
Tag Generator.
|
| Web page contents |
| |
What is on your web page is probably
the most important aspect of getting ranked highly on
the search engines.
What the search engines want to see on your page is content
in the form of text. Pages that are all graphics with
little or no text will not get ranked as high as pages
with a lot of text. Text within a graphic doesn't count,
all the search engine spider will see is the name of the
graphic object.
The keywords you have used in your title meta tag, description
meta tag and keywords meta tag should appear on the page.
Use the important words early on and try and use them
several times in the first few sentences.
Use these important words several times throughout the
page.
Try and place important words between heading tags, that
is, between <h1> and </h1> etc. tags on the
page, this adds extra importance to the word. |
| Alt Tags |
| |
Alt tags are the tags associated
with graphics. These are the contents of the box that
displays when you hover the cursor over a graphic object
that has an alt tag. Try it on the graphics at the top
of this page, they contain alt tags.
Search engines can use the values in the alt tags to further
add weight to important words. So again, if you sell widgets
and you have a picture of a Widget on your page, give
it an alt tag value of "Widget". |
| Link count |
| |
The link count is the number
of websites that link to your website that a search engine
knows about. Some search engines, including major ones,
place a lot of importance on the link count. They deem
that the more websites there are that link to your site,
then the more important your site must be, and therefore
the higher in the search result listings your website
will be placed.
Try and get as many other websites to link to your site
as possible.
Reciprocal links with other sites, (you link to me and
I'll link to you), are well worth pursuing.
If you have several websites then make sure they have
links to each other. |
| |
|
If you take all the
above into consideration then your website is well on
the way to attaining a high ranking position on the search
engines.
This of course is an outline of what is required. When
we tune a site for the search engines we employ all these
techniques and more to get high positions.
We also run software to compare the website we are tuning
against competitors websites on various search engines
to ensure that our website is optimised as well as the
ones at the top of the search engine listings.
If you would like more information on our search engine
optimisation services then please follow this link.
Search
Engine Optimisation |
|
|
|
