Search Engine Visibility - Fundamental Points In Optimising Your Website

Search engine optimisation (SEO) has become big business due to the increased technical expertise required to properly carryout and deliver real measurable improvements. With constant movement of the goalposts it's testing for even the best SEOers to keep up to speed. There are however several basic level points we can all keep in mind should the cost of hiring professionals be unrealistic.

Analysing your website has to be a good starting point. Web logs and other forms of statistical information can give early indication where errors may exist within your website. Determining where search bots are struggling will allow you to focus on fixing errors which might otherwise nullify other SEO efforts. Googlebot activity for instance, is well worth spending time to understand. Reports will indicate if pages are running slow and as such perhaps search engines are abandoning the site. If search engines are struggling then its safe to assume regular visitors will also be experiencing slow loading of pages and possibly leaving prematurely.

Sitesmaps are another fairly easy way to make it obvious where all your pages are. Combined with the use of robots.txt you can let search engines also learn what's best left un-indexed. Sitesmaps are often presented as a summary page (or pages) within the site displaying links to everything that's worthy of listing. Google also offers a means to upload XML formatted files whereby you can push the list at Google instead of waiting for the next scheduled visit.

It's always worth considering how your site actually appears to search engines. To give you something of a feel for how well your pages perform it's perhaps worth setting yourself up with Mozilla Firefox (if you haven't already) as this nifty little browser allows you to easily turn off both images and JavaScript. If you find your pages are pretty messed up (as is sometimes the case) it may be that you should consider a design that has a better textual structure with less dependency upon graphics and JavaScript. While it's not the greatest sin in web design, overuse of graphics as a means of navigation can prove deadly for search engines and full site indexing. As a minimum, a text only set of links mirroring your main structure can be nestled at the bottom of the page. This will at least give search engines something to work with. A good alternative is to use CSS as a method to retain a classy design while also offering linking text. Where images are used it's always a good idea to remember to use ALT tags. As search engines effectively ignore images, so the ALT tag offers a little bit of something they can latch onto.

Flash animation is another area similar to graphics that offers nothing to search engines. To the user however, they can be massively attractive and provide an area from where a stream of information can be delivered. The best is to use flash in moderation, striking a balance between engaging the user while satisfying the engines. Just like graphical navigation anything important communicated to the user through flash should perhaps be subtly repeated in the regular text somewhere.

It's often said but nevertheless it's amazing how many people still ignore the basic meta tags. There's plenty of information around which will help anyone get a quick understanding of how best to fill out the title, description and keyword meta tags. While meta tags are important they are only a minor aspect of any one page. It's imperative that meta tags properly mirror the content of a page but of greater importance is that the content has an array of words and phrases that are relevant to the niche in which you are trying to compete. Don't go searching Google for words you think you should be listed under if your pages doesn't have them within the content.

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The Painful Truth About Getting Your Website to the Top of the Search Engines

"How do I get my website to come up on top of the search engines?" – That is one of the most frequently asked questions I get asked by clients.

The truth is, it's not easy.

With millions of websites on the internet right now and thousands being added each month, everyone is striving to do the same – to come up in the first spot (or at least on the first page).

In reality there are only 2 ways you can come up on top:

Keywords Before you embark on either of these marketing methods, you need to understand about keywords.

Keywords or key phrases are the words that visitors type into a search engine to find a service or product. The best keywords are those that are commonly typed in by your potential customers, but which aren't used much on your competitor's websites.

In other words, if you optimize your pages for keywords your potential customers use a lot, but your competitors haven't thought of, you win.

But here's the catch...you'll never get to know which are the best keywords for your website simply by guessing.

There are many tools you can use to find what keywords people are using. One is called Overture and it is a free service. It shows you how many times people have searched for a particular term during a one month period.

This does not, however show you how many competing websites there are for that particular keyword.

If you are serious about finding the perfect keywords, I would recommend using a tool called Wordtracker – www.wordtracker.com. Although you do need to pay a few dollars for this service, it is far more sophisticated and gives you much more information than Overture.

Through a series of simple steps, Wordtracker identifies the best keywords to use on each page of your website.

Wordtracker's suggestions are based on over 300 million keywords and phrases that people have used over the previous 90 days. (In other words, there is no "guessing" when you use Wordtracker. Everything is based on the keywords millions of people have actually typed into search engines.)

Best of all, their competitive analysis tool enables you to find those "best keywords" - the ones your potential customers use, but which your competitors don't know about.

Once you have identified the best keywords, you can either run a pay per click marketing campaign or optimize your website for search engines.

Pay per click

Pay per click advertising is when an advertiser (you) pays for each qualified click that sends a search engine user to your web page. PPC requires you to bid on keywords or phrases that relate to your business. The best known pay per click services are Google AdWords and Overture.

Generally you can bid from as little as a few cents per visitor. However, the more you bid the higher up in the search engine your advertisement will appear. Pay per click is a great way to deliver targeted and qualified visitors to your website at a very reasonable price.

It is a good idea to experiment with different PPC search engines to find the one that works best for you. In addition, you will need to spend time testing your keywords and ads.

There are hundreds of pay per click search engines. For more information check out:

http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engines prefer to list sites that contain good content. In order to rank high you need to create a website that has maximum content and which uses lots of relevant keywords to your service and products.

Once you decide on the keywords, use them in

(a) Your website's domain name


(b) The title of your page - This is displayed in the top bar of your browser window


(c) The heading of your home page


(d) The first paragraph of your home page


(e) Meta tags - Keywords, page title, description


(f) Titles of your graphics


(g) Alternative (Alt) tags - These appear in place of images when the browser preferences are set for text only.

Whilst it is important to use keywords as much as possible, it is also important you use them only if they are relevant and do not sound awkward. If you spam your keywords you may be penalised or even banned by some search engines.

Another important thing to consider when trying to optimize your website for search engines is to have as many relevant links pointing back to your website from other complementary sites. This can be done through link exchanges or by writing articles/posts and submitting them to article directories or forums. Ensure you include your domain name at the end of each article/post.

If this all seems too overwhelming, you can employ the services of a Search engine optimization company, who will make your website's content more search engine friendly. In fact, I highly recommend if you decide that Search Engine Marketing is one of the main ways you wish to promote your website, you do hire an expert.

Please remember, having your website listed at the top of the search engines is not the only way to promote your website. There are lots of other ways you can get visitors to your site for little or no money.