Search Engine Optimisation

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9 Ways to Optimise Your Website

Search Engine Opimisation is about ensuring that your website has the qualities that the Search Engines value to maximise your chances of being found when an Internet search is made using the terms (known as keywords) you want your website to be found for.

As of October 2007, according to the Netcraft survey there were 142,805,398 websites on the Internet.  A rough calculation suggests that this equates to 30 billion pages, and that number is growing by 5% a month. In order to be visible in the SERPS it is vital that pages are optimised for the search engines.

When we design a page or a website, for ourselves or a client we build in all those elements that we know makes a website successful.

Domain Name

Page Titles

This is what Search Engines pick out when displaying the results, so should be sufficiently interesting/relevant for the searcher to click through to your site. 

Images

Should be of good quality with a descriptive name, have a title and alternate text (this is revealed when holding the cursor over an image), and is displayed if the visitor has chosen "Text Only" for his search results. This increases the chances of getting visitors through Image Search, which can be a very valuable source of Search Engine traffic.

Images should also be optimised to be as small as possible consistent with good quality; large images slow down loading time.

Inbound Links

Without links to your site, in Search Engine terms it doesn't exist. Three aspects of links are important; the relevance, the ranking  and the anchor text of the site linking to you. 

Internal Links

Your use of links across your website gives the Search Engines an understanding of what parts of the site you consider most important and is your opportunity to tell the Search Engines what you want them to see.

Outbound Links

Opinions differ on the value of outbound links.  If links are made to relevant sites then you are enhancing the user experience, which Google approves of.  I'm very much in favour of outbound links because linking and sharing information is what lies at the heart of the internet.  If it doesn't do your site any good, at least it's not something the Search Engines will penalise you for.

Don't link to pages that won't interest your user - at best it's a waste of time and at worst it devalues your site's quality in the eyes of the Search Engines.

Organic Growth

A sudden increase in numbers of links sets the alarm bells going with the Search Engines; they like links that are naturally acquired and benefical to users.  Buying links and throwing them at sites is a favourite method of SEO firms in achieving results.  The Search Engines don't like being manipulated and will penalise those webmasters who appear to be trying to game them.

Keywords on the Page

The snippet (the text below the title) in the SERPS is either taken from the content metatag or off the page.  The words that have been searched for on the Search Engine are displayed in bold text, so clearly those words which you want to be found for must be on the page.  Calculating an appropriate keyword density, use of plurals, etc is part of the webmaster's art in optimising.

..... and finally .....

Content and the User Experience

The Google algorithm for ranking websites has over 200 elements which are factored in; we can only guess at what they are, but we do know that the algorithm is designed to achieve the best possible search result for the user.  This means relevant, unique and compelling content.   There is much more on Search Engine Optimisation here, which is a summary of guidance given by Matt Cutts of Google on Search Engine Optimisation.