Search Engine Optimisation - climb the rankings ladder 06 June 2005
For anyone with an online business search engine rankings are crucial in attracting new custom. However, to develop and maintain your ranking, or search engine optimisation (SEO), you have to keep on top of what's happening in the rapidly changing search engine industry.
Search engines aim to supply the best, unbiased results possible for any given search and don't want to be manipulated by marketers. For this reason they change their algorithms frequently and that's why it's important to stay ahead of the game.
So how can you make sure your site is recognised and posted high up in the big search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and soon MSN? The ways search engines find and rank pages is changing as they react to the way the web changes but there are still some tried and tested methods that can help your site climb that listings ladder.
Consider content
Search engines consider text very important. Lots of relevant content updated regularly and consistently, well-chosen keywords and plenty of interesting content on your site makes it easier for the search engines to find you.
Use keywords carefully
Keywords are important for SEO. It's advisable to use full phrases rather than abbreviations in your content. It is important to include keywords relating closely to your business in several areas of the site including your domain name (make sure your keywords are in the root of your URL, not the stem), in the title tags in your source code, in the meta description of your site and in your meta keyword tags. However, don't go overboard - search engines will penalise the repetition of keywords if they occur too often on your page.
Avoid using complex HTML
Complex bits of HTML can confuse search engines. This includes over-elaborate tables, long passages of JavaScript, and putting important text in graphical format.
Create other content-rich pages to direct traffic to your site
Increase the number of pages that link to your site by creating some pages yourself. Make sure these pages contain valuable content that provides people with useful information (though this should be relevant to your site). Search engines hate "pointer pages" that have no content and exist only to add to the number of links pointing to a site.
Don't forget the smaller search engines
As well as submitting your site to the search engine giants such as Google and Yahoo! don't forget the smaller directories such exactseek, or infotiger. This not only gets your site to a wider audience but can improve the ranking on the big engines.
Create multiple pages
The more content-rich sites that point to your site the better, so it's a good idea to create as many good quality information sites as possible. One way to do this is by dividing your sites into several separate sites that all link to each other. This works especially well if you sell a number of different products or services, focussing on different keywords on each site.
