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What is search engine optimisation?

Search engine optimisation, or search engine marketing, is the process of making your website more visible to potential visitors who are searching for websites like yours on the major search engines.

Search engines explained

There are thousands of search engines online, serving every different business sector, subject and geographical area.  The best known and most used search engines are Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search.  Search engines use a process called indexing to visit your website and gather information about the website content.  The search engines then use this information, along with statistics about keywords, relevancy and other factors, to return relevant results to a search query (the words which a user enters into a search box).

Are directories and search engines different?

Directories function in a different way to search engines.  To  be included in a directory, the web designer or website owner will fill out a form on an internet site, normally including a description of their website, the website address and some contact details.  A directory may be searchable, but it will only search the information which is submitted to them, not the entire contents of a website like a search engine.

How do I make my website search engine friendly?

Search engines prefer clear, well designed websites with plenty of unique and relevant content with descriptive metatagging, including plenty of your target keywords.  All images on a website should be descriptively titled and tagged with alt-tags (a short piece of text when the image is unavailable for any reason).  Build up a good network of incoming and outgoing links and remove dead links frequently, and make sure that your website is always up and running and ready to receive visitors.

Accessible web browsing is important, and to optimise your website for search engines you should use standards compliant code.  This helps search engines to easily navigate your site for indexing, as well as allowed disabled visitors or text only browsers to view your site correctly.

What is the importance of links for search engine optimisation?

Links to your website are like recommendations for your business or organisation.  Search engines check all the links which go in or out of your website to help determine the quality and relevancy of your website and its content.  Having a lot of incoming links from other websites shows that a website is reputable, and has content worth looking at.  The internet is in fact almost entirely made up of links – every time you click on some text or a button on screen and you move to a new page, or a new window opens up, you have clicked on a link, or hyperlink.

How can I get links to my website?

Website owners should try to build up a good network of links with other companies, websites, professional organisations and clubs.  The most effective links from a search engine optimisation point of view are links from similar websites, or websites with related content.  Submitting your website to a relevant category in an internet directory can be a source of relevant links.  Website owners or webmasters can also contact the administrators of other websites to offer link exchanges, where reciprocal links are added to both websites, sharing visitors and increasing traffic.  This kind of link is especially valuable, since each website acknowledges the other as worth linking to. 

Paid for links should be treated with discretion and care.  Few internet links are worth paying for, and paying for links can harm a webpage’s search engine rankings.  It may be worth paying for inclusion on specific directories and links pages, if they are highly relevant for your website content, feature a number of your competitors and are highly ranked for your target keywords.

How do I choose my target keywords?

Choose your target keywords carefully, since they will be the primary way that visitors find your website online.  Target keywords should be the words which most frequently appear in your website content, or the words which you hope that visitors will use to find you on search engines.   Make sure that your website has plenty of unique content which incorporates these keywords, and use them in your metatags and site descriptions for directories.   There are a great number of keyword generators available online. 

Don’t overuse any particular keyword, or add unconnected keywords together in bulk.  Search engines look for keywords to appear in logical positions and make sense, and there can be penalties for the overuse of keywords to try to increase your ranking for a particular word or words.

What are meta tags, and are they important?

Meta tags are invisible descriptions which are contained in the code of a webpage.  Meta tags help to describe the content of your site.  There are two main types of meta tag, description and keywords.  Opinion is divided over how useful these meta tags are for search engine placement; however, Google uses the meta-description in search results, when running an information search, such as site:, link: or cache:, or when returning results where a snippet (a piece of text generated from the text on your webpage which includes the search terms used) is not available.  Google recommend adding a unique meta-description for each page on your site.  Using a unique meta-description helps to improve the relevance of your search engine results, and helps searchers to know what is on the page itself, increasing the perceived relevancy of the results.  There is no upper limit on the number of words you can use in the meta-description, but Google will only display 150 characters at a time.

The meta-keywords tag is generally considered to be much less important than the meta-description, but relevant meta-keywords can still assist higher search engine rankings.  Some directories will automatically gather this information from your website and add it to your directory entry, so using the keywords function can save time. 

When adding my website to a search engine or directory, how much information should I include?

As a general rule, you should try to include as much information as possible.  Directory listings and other web pages with links to or information about your website help to show search engines that your website is valid and relevant.  In addition, the words used on the content of these pages will become associated with your website, assisting keyword optimisation.  Some directories will ask you to submit a meta-description and meta-keywords (which will be invisible) alongside a normal description and keywords.  Again, despite the fact that you can’t see this information, search engines can read this data and it helps associate your keywords with your website address.  Including graphical elements such as a company logo, photos of products, premises or a recent project will help make your entry stand out.

Are there some links I should avoid?

You should make sure that any website that you link to is a reputable enterprise.  Some websites may publish malicious code, which can infect and harm people’s computers.  Other sites may use underhand search engine techniques, such as hiding text containing keywords (e.g. by making it the same colour as the background) to make a site appear relevant for unrelated search queries.  Some websites may be involved in the distribution of adware or other dubious computer software.  Always make sure that a website is honestly operated, and only include links which are relevant to your business.  Look for clean design, usability and standards compliant code.

In the vast majority of cases, paid links should be avoided.  However some paid for links are worthwhile if they are particularly relevant and receive a substantial amount of traffic. Another thing to look out for is websites which use a redirect to link to your site.  You can check for a redirect by holding your mouse over the link and looking in the bottom left corner.  If the name of the website linked to appears in this bottom grey bar, it is a direct link.  If the name of the website is broken up, or preceded by another name (http://www.example.com/redirect= or similar), then a redirect is in use.  Again, these links can be good for traffic, but a direct link is much better.

How can I prevent my website appearing in search engine results?

You can prevent your website, or individual website pages, from appearing in web search results by using a file called robots.txt, which contains instructions for the search engine ‘bots’.  Sometimes, robots may ignore this instruction, especially robots which check the internet for malware and other malicious code.

What is my Google Page Rank and how can I improve it?

Broadly speaking, Google Page Rank is a measure of how popular your internet site is.  It is directly linked to your website’s position in Google’s results pages, although it is not the only factor which Google uses to determine your position on the search engine results page (SERP).  You can increase your webpage’s Page Rank by getting more visitors to your website, increasing the links available to your website and generally by promoting your website and business both on and offline.

Where can I find search engine optimisation resources and advice?

There are hundreds of SEO resources listed on the Committed Projects Resource Directory. Use the links on the left to explore our directories, articles and web design resources.

Committed Projects offer a complete web design and e-business consultancy service for small and medium sized businesses.  For tailored internet marketing, search engine consultancy and advice, please visit our main website or contact us.

 

For more information about how Committed Projects can help with your business, please visit our main website.

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