Website Optimisation - Myths and Facts

What is Website Optimisation?

Optimising your website is essential to enable the search engines to find your website and return it better than those of your competition. Unfortunately there are a lot of myths; some people believe the methods that worked a few years ago will work now.  Just as design has moved on (remember sites like this?) so has optimisation.

This is not the case; Google's search algorithm changes seven or eight times a week; some changes are small refinements, others are massive changes that result in significant changes in the SERPS (search engine results pages).

Google Webmaster Help Forum

As a Top Contributor to Google Webmaster Help Forum we are aware of changes as soon as they are implemented. We keep a very close eye on changes, and from time to time there will be a changes that have a very detrimental effect on a very significant number of websites. The good news is that websites that have been honestly built with no attempt to manipulate the search engines should be safe from penalty.

At best old optimisation methods simply cease to give the benefit - in which case websites perform more poorly (this is not a penalty) at worst your website could be penalised for tricks designed to fool the search engines, and this can take some time to escape from.  Webmasters Help is a great place to ask advice; most questions have already been asked, so search the database first.

Understanding the Bot

The search engine bot spiders your website reading the content.  It cannot read what is on the page, it reads what is in the source code.  To find out what the bot sees on this page try this tool. It follows that the bot cannot see images so they need to be treated particularly carefully to get the best out of them.

Google has over 200 metrics in the search algorithm; we know what some of them are, but there are many we can only guess at and we have no idea how large a part various metrics play in the calculation of how a page is returned in the SERPS. What is sure that the algorithm is aiming hard at making the results as useful as they can be. |Top|

PageRank

If you have the Google Toolbar you will see PageRank as a rectangle that goes from grey to green, with Page Rank registering as NA (Not Available) to 10.  Only sites like Google themselves will register a full 10.

The TB PR (Toolbar PageRank) is updated 3/4 times a year whilst the PageRank used in the search algorithms is being constantly updated. It is also just one of the 200+ metrics used in the search algorithm. Because it is visible its importance tends to be over-rated. If anyone tries to sell you a link scheme or anything claimed to boost your PR ignore them; they either don't know that it has minimal value in terms of search results or they are trying to scam you.

Content

Ask Google what they want from a website and the answer is simple -

Unique, original and compelling content written for the user and not the search engine

Beyond following the advice on this page regarding optimisation, which will in time become second nature, don't even think about the search engines.

On the question of content, never, every copy anyone else's content. If Google sees duplicate content it will choose one to feature in the SERPS and dump the rest. Use a lot and your site might get dumped. |Top|

Links

Your website will not be found without at least one link to it - that's how search engines work, so clearly links are essential but one of the most problematic areas. We give links to everyone we build a site for to guarantee their visibility.

Relevant Links

The best links are those from websites with good PageRank that are relevant to your site, the more closely relevant the better. These are hard to come by as no established site wants to give a link to a new site unless it has a great deal to offer. This is one of the very valuable benefits of petwebistes.org.uk building your site - a relevant, high value link from one of our websites. Other web designers may offer you a link but the link is unlikely to be relevant or of such high value. Rule of thumb is only link to websites that your users will find useful.   |Top|

Link Exchange

Once you have a website that is appearing in the search results you will start receiving emails suggesting a link exchange. At best, Google will ignore these links and they will not help your position in the search results. However, if you link to a website which could be described as a "bad neighborhood" your site will be penalised. So, quite simply, ignore these emails, they are certainly not for your benefit.   |Top|

Link Building

Some Search Engine Optimisation companies will try and persuade you your site's results can be improved by building links to your website and charge you a good deal of money to undertake this. It's a waste of time and money. 1,000 irrelevant, spammy links aren't worth a single relevant quality link. Your site may achieve a temporary benefit until the bots discover the links are valueless, but will then be ignored and you will be no better off.   |Top|

Similarly, you will be wasting your time dropping your link in forums, social networks and chat rooms. They have no value.

Links Page

They were quite successful in 2002 but now the bots simply disregard them and they are the mark of the amateur webmaster. Any links you give should be within the body of the page and in context; if you believe they are adding value for your user then tell them about it.   |Top|

Link Selling

Don't do it. Your website will be penalised and possibly banned unless you add a <nofollow> attribute to the link. However most businesses that ask you to place links on your page will only do so without the nofollow attribute.

Keywords

There was a time when keyword density was important to tell the search engines what your website was about.  This is no longer true.  |Top|

Search engines have become far more sophisticated and can understand your pages best through the page architecture. The page is structured by the header <h>h1</h> tags. Header tags are a way of formatting your headings and sub-headings, with <h>h1</h> being the most important to <h>H6</h> the least important.

If the words your page is about are used intelligently in those tags the meaning of your page will be quite clear to the search engines.

Keyword Stuffing

This was once very popular; at the time cramming your keywords as many times as possible whether or not they made sense to the user helped your site, but no longer.  This is now regarded as a spammy technique and is penalised.  |Top|

Hidden Text

Another kind of keyword stuffing. Text can be hidden by placing it behind images or making it the same colour as the page amongst other methods. Spammy and dangerous, leading to penalisation.  |Top|

Metatags

There are two metatags in use - the Description and Keyword.  Google disregards the keyword meta, though some other search engines still use it. The value of the Description metatag is that if it is good and relevant it may be used by the search engine as the snippet on the results page. The snippet is the descriptive text that appears below the entry. This offers an excellent opportunity to really sell your website.

If the search engine don't feel that your description is a match to the search query they will take some text from the page to form the snippet.   |Top|

Title

The <title>Your page title</> isn't a metatag but is one of the most important lines of text you have.  It is used as the title of your return in the SERPS and is your opportunity to really sell your page, giving a concise description of the page content.

Images

Most pages have images but few webmasters try to make their images work for them. Image Search is used a great deal instead of Web Search and good images is another way to bring visitors to your pages. One of the advantages of Image Search is that users will go deep into the pages to find what they are looking for, unlike Web Search so first page position is far less important. Rules to follow:

Localisation

The move towards personalised search is growing ever greater which means better results based upon your location, and doubtless this will only increase with time.

To press home your locality make sure you have your physical address on every page, and a geographical landline phone number is preferable to an 08 or mobile. This not only supports your effort to be found in your area but creates a "trust" factor, valued by visitors and search engines.

A Google Business Map offers more opportunities to make the most of Localisation and promote your website. They follow the same optimisation rules as websites.  |Top|

Google Support

Go to Webmaster Central to see the range of tools on offer.

Search Engine Friendly (SEF)

Many mistakes are made by novice and professional webmasters in site design that doesn't help the search engines. Chief culprits are: