Design by Elle

Doesn’t matter how beautiful your web site is, if it can’t be found on search engines, you are loosing prospective business. There is a mistaken belief that search engines optimisation is very complicated and hard to achieve when it doesn’t have to be. As long as you follow a few simple guidelines, you can improve your search results ranking tremendously.

1. Rely on Texts and not Images
   Search engines are like “blind” users. They can’t see the beautiful images on your site. As the search bots crawl your site, they look for texts, which they use to index and classify your pages. Text in graphics only is invisible to search engines. Provide alternative text descriptions for each image. Lastly, never create a web site made all is Flash as search spiders can’t read Flash content. Provide an HTML alternative to all Flash sites.
2. Include Specific Keywords Phrases
   Use keywords in your domain name, URLs, title tag, description metatag and keyword metatag. Furthermore, include keywords in headings and body text. Your main keywords or phrases should appear throughout the text and most importantly in the first sentence of the page.
3. Use Semantic Markup
   Well-structured documents that use logical markup for content and control the site’s presentation through CSS create smaller file sizes, supply better machine-readable information for web crawlers and rank higher on search engines’ results.
4. Freshness of Pages
   Older sites have established stability but that doesn’t conflict keeping their content up-to-date and fresh. One way that is becoming very popular is blogging, which provides frequently updated articles and a reason for users to come back to your site. Very simply put, frequent updates lead to frequent spidering of your site.
5. Do not redirect through refresh metatag
   Do not send your visitor to another page other than the one they clicked on. Furthermore, do not use java scripts for redirects.
6. Do not use frames
   Complex frames are problematic to search engines who may not be able to access every page on your website. Frames also make it difficult to bookmark or link to internal pages in your site.
7. Quality Inbound Links
   Your page rank is based on the number and the quality of links form other web sites to yours. The more high-ranking sites link to your site, the better.
8. Use Clean URLs
   Clean URLs as opposed to meaningless database id numbers can provide keywords phrases and an additional value as permanent links. Many search engines find it hard or impossible to follow dynamic links, thus clean URLs help the visibility of pages created on the fly. Hyphens are the referred method for indicating a space in URLs.
9. Site Map
   Another method to increase the visibility of your site’s inner pages is a site map. A site map makes it easier for a search engine spider to find your content by providing internal links to all the pages on your site.
10. Use Informative Text Links
    Generic links that say “click here” do not inform the user of the link’s destination. Use the actual phrase as the link. Try and use key phrases as text links.

As you can see, many of the above guidelines are also good practices for web accessibility. If you follow basic web accessibility guidelines, you are helping all visitors to your site, may they be humans or machines, to easily find information on your site, thus are already on your way to better search engines optimisation.

Further Reading

Aubuchon V., (2007), Google Ranking Factors—SEO Checklist
There are “over 100 SEO factors” that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results (SERPs). What are the search engine optimisation rules?

Archer J., (2006), How to Promote Your Web Site, Forty Media
An introduction to search engines optimisation covering what is white hat and black hat SEO as well as a few useful tips.

Beasley C., (2007), SEO Guide, on websitepublisher.net
The guide include sections on search engine optimisation introduction, keyword research, link popularity and page rank, link building, on-page search engine Optimisation, site architecture and supplemental reading.

Johansson R., (2005), 8 Essential Search Engine Marketing Techniques, on 456 Berea Street
The 8 essential things you really need to know about search engine optimisation.

Johansson R., (2005), Basics of search engine optimisation, on 456 Berea Street
Johansson goes over practices he uses for search engine optimisation for his site as well as his clients’.

Khoo V., (2007), Improve your “findability”, The Sydney Morning Herald
A few things you can do yourself to see if you can improve your “findability” on Google

Lead C, (2007), Six tips for writing content for search engines, on molt:n
Another post that covers the same subject on how to write content to be ranked higher for search engine optimisation.

Opitz P., (2005), Clean URLs for Better Search Engines Ranking
To maximise the visibility of your site in the organic listings of the biggest search engines it is important to strategically work out how keywords are used.

Seomoz.org, (2006), Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
This guide provides a complete overview of many of the processes, techniques and strategies used by professional search engine optimisation specialists.