SEO tips and information
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a really important process these days. Essentially, it's the practice of optimising your website so that it appears as high up the rankings as possible in Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
SEO is not an exact science as such, no-one can honestly give you 100% guarantees on the results of what you or they do. There are many reasons for this, here are some of the key factors:
- Each Search Engine ranks your website based on different criteria
- Your web pages are indexed (scanned and ranked) at intervals chosen automatically by the Search Engine companies
- The websites of your competitors change, just as yours do and this can affect your rankings
That said, there are a lot of things which can be done to help you get good SEO for your website and some things you should avoid at all costs!
Jobs for the Web Developer (that would be us!):
- Create well structured HTML code with appropriate use of headings, correct alt attributes on images etc
- Provide good URLs - Google for one now indexes the URL so http://www.website.com/?section=1 is no use, much better is http://www.website.com/?section=used_cars
- Create a "Site map" which links to every page on the website
- Pages should work without Javascript, Cookies, Sessions etc. Search Engine indexing bots generally do not have Javascript, Cookie, Session and other advanced capabilities so links or content which rely on Javascript won't be indexed by them!
Jobs for the Designer:
- Use images appropriately in the layout/design
- Allow space high up the page for textual content
- Navigation systems should link to all pages/sections of the website
Jobs for the Website Administrator:
- Domain names should be relevant e.g. if you're selling used cars, uc.com is poor, usedcars.com or used-cars.com is much better
- Write your text naturally but including your keywords/keyphrases as often as you can. If your keyphrases are two or more words, they need to appear as people will search for them.
e.g. if you are optimising for the keyphrase "used cars":
"We sell cars from our office in London. Our stock features used and new vehicles"
...is not as good as
"We sell used cars and new cars from our office in London". - Get links from relevant websites (that is websites which cover the same or similar topics) to yours.
Make sure as far as you can that the text used to link to your website features your keywords e.g. again using the "used cars" keyphrase example, linking on the text "For more information click here" is not as good as "Click here for more information on used cars" (where the bold text is the actual link) - Submit your website to online directories such as DMOZ
Things to avoid at all costs:
- Cloaked/hidden content. Google in particular deplore this practice and will ban you from their listings if they find you have used cloaked content. This includes schemes which display different content to Search Engines. Weblator will not provide you with means to cloak content.
- Keyword spamming. If you artificially load your pages with keywords, you will be penalised or banned.
- Ensure you don't host malicious code. If your website features User Generated Content (UGC) you must make sure you're not hosting viruses, phishing applications or otherwise malicious code.
- Meta & title tags must be relevant to your page content.
- Don't use redirect or doorway pages. This includes "splash pages"
- Don't duplicate content across pages or websites. Otherwise this could be interpreted as you trying to monopolise search results for certain keyphrases.
- Don't participate in linking schemes. These are seen as artificial ways to raise Search Engine rankings.
Most Search Engine providers have specific information for Webmasters, here are the most popular:
