Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

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What are the main factors that affect search engine performance?

"Search engines work on the content you see."

Search Engines do not reveal their rating methods and are constantly trying to improve their algorithms. Search Engines try to assess the text content of your web pages as seen by the human visitor.

They actively try to combat any tricks used to try to mislead them about the real content of your web pages. Beware of magic solutions that will put your website at the top of the search engine - they may well get your website removed from the search engines instead.

Web Design and SEO: Coding

"Make the code clean and uncluttered so the content is easy to find."

Websites designed specifically to be as successful as possible on the search engines must adhere to a set of specific guidelines that have a significant impact on the site design options available.

The main principle is to get your page content as close to the top of the page (as viewed in the source code) with as little structuring code (eg tables) in and around your content as possible.

The best approach is to use CSS style sheets for layout and presentation coding as possible. If you are using tables for layout keep the tables as simple as possible and avoid nesting tables as much as possible.

Also it is best to place large amounts of code (such as javascript) in separate files.

Avoid the use of frames. These can hide your content from search engines and produce unsatisfactory results in search engines that do find the content. Typically search engines send visitors to the frame with the content (ignoring the other frames) resulting in the visitor only seeing a part of your pages.

Provide plenty of navigation (preferably common) between pages to allow search engines to find all your pages easily.

Content for People:

"Write the text for people, mark up the text for search engines."

Good quality well crafted content that is helpful and useful to your human site visitors is the number 1 priority.

Mark up the content for the search engines. Text content is what search engines work on - help them by showing them what is important. Write headlines more literally - don't be obsqure. Search engines are not as good as we are at interpretation. Put yourself in the mind of your audience. Use the words your audience might use to search for your content.

Remember - no amount of search engine optimisation is going to be of any value unless your web pages are useful to the human visitors when they arrive at your website.

"Target keywords and phrases...."

The first thing to do is make a list of the phrases relevant to your business that searchers might use. Then these Key words need to be added to your web pages. Preferably the key words need to appear at least 5 times (and in important places in the code - titles, headings etc) per 100 words and the pages need to include more that 250 words for search engines to take the page seriously.

How long should target keyword phrases be? The days of putting single words or 2 word phrases into the search engine and expecting to find what you are looking for have gone. There is too much competition so too many results are returned and most are too general. We now know that we need to be quite specific with our searches to find exactly what we are searching for. In most English speaking countries now the average search phrase contains 3 or 4 words (according to Web analytics company OneStat.com.) In turn this means websites need to target longer more specific phrases if they are to have success in search engine optimisation (or do you prefer optimization?). But remember you can't just repeat your target phrases endlessly - the primary target of your website is people and they are unlikely to find this technique very appealing.

Images look nice but search engines are blind. Avoid using images in place of words particularly for main headings and links - use text.

Links (off page considerations):

Links to a web site from other good quality relevant sites give sites a significant boost in the search engine rankings, in Google in particular.

Competition:

"The stiffer the competition .... the harder you need to work with Search Engine optimisation."

There is often a large number of competitors so how well your website can do in the search engine rankings depends how hard the competition is working.

When the competition is particularly tough the best approach is to look for a niche where the competition is not so strong. Results can never be guaranteed but there is usually plenty of room for improvement and there are nearly always areas where good results are achievable.

Timescales:

"Good search engine rankings usually take time ....6 months is typical"

Good search engine performance usually takes time and effort to achieve. It is likely to take at least a couple of months before a website is properly listed by the search engines. Search engines often experiment with the ranking of new websites for a few months before deciding what ranking the website deserves and typically it can take 6 months to settle.

It is impossible to predict in advance how search engines will rank your web pages or how strong the competition will be for those vital top rankings.

Good search engine ranking often requires a sustained effort of monitoring performance, tuning and building content and building links over at least 6 months or even 12 months before your website pages are regarded as established and rankings stablise to provide a strong long term search engine presence. A one off attempt is a good start but is unlikely to achieve a website's best possible level of search engine performance.

Pay per Click:

You pay a search engine such as Google to list your site (in their sponsored links section – column on right hand side in Google called Adwords) against selected key word search terms. Then if someone clicks the link to you website in your advert you pay the going rate for that click (you usually fix a monthly budget to limit your spend). This is a way of getting immediate results but can be expensive.