Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
Rather like the recipe for Coca–Cola, no outsider knows the precise ingredients that make up the constantly changing algorithms used by the big search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
One Magic Ingredient
Nevertheless, the most important single ingredient of search engine optimisation is known for certain — basic competence. The do’s and don’ts of search engine optimisation boil down to:
- competent writing by the website’s owner;
- competent construction by the designer.
Search Engines are Blind
A website is made up of 3 elements:
- the writing;
- the graphic design;
- the code beneath the surface.
Unlike the majority of a website’s human visitors, search engines are blind. They couldn’t care less about pretty colours and fancy graphics. All they notice are the content and how the website is put together.
Search Engine Do’s
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Clear Writing
Poor writing is as big a turn–off for search engines as it is for human visitors. You should keep to the point, use plain language, and avoid jargon and clichés. No matter how well you communicate using speech, the ability to write clearly is a separate skill. There is no shame in hiring a professional copywriter if necessary!
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Good Grammar
Humans can usually make sense of bad grammar, but search engines are not so clever.
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Spelling
Correct spellign spelling is important, especially of the words the search engines will remember. If your potential customers are searching for ‘widgets’, and your website claims that you sell ‘widgetts’, those customers won’t find you.
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Fresh Content
Update your content frequently. Obviously, this isn't appropriate for all websites, but search engines give more importance to websites whose content changes often than to websites that appear to be neglected.
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Technical Features
These are some of the standard seo technical features we include in every Lab 99 website:
- We use keywords (important words which describe the content) in appropriate places within the website.
- We use description and keyword meta tags within the head section of each HTML page.
- We use ‘alt’ text to describe images.
- We use titles to describe the destinations of links unless the link itself describes its destination.
- Our designs are efficiently coded by hand, by us; we do not use off–the–shelf designs or bloated, computer–generated code.
- We use up–to–date and structurally sound code.
- We use valid HTML and CSS code.
- We use text rather than images for all essential information, and use recognised image replacement techniques where necessary.
Search Engine Don’ts
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Javascript Navigation
If the links between the pages of your website are constructed using Javascript instead of CSS, the search engines won’t follow them.
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Frames
A frame (sometimes known as an iframe) is a device for inserting one web page inside another, usually one from a different website. Frames have their legitimate uses, but structuring an entire website with frames puts up a barrier to search engines, which will simply not be able to get from the home page to any of the other pages.
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Inappropriate Use of Tables
The classic sign of the cowboy web designer, laying out web pages with tables used to be necessary but has been superseded now that all visual browsers recognise CSS. Your website won’t be completely invisible to the search engines, but a professional, fully HTML– and CSS–based structure and layout will always be given greater importance.
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Flash
To human visitors, decorative Flash animations are wonderful if done expertly, but become crude and off–putting gimmicks when done badly, which they often are. Websites made entirely using Flash are completely invisible to search engines, unless an HTML equivalent has been created, which it usually hasn’t.
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Splash Pages
Remember those ‘click here to enter’ splash pages? They seemed like a good idea in the early days of the internet, when no–one knew any better. Burying your content one level deeper than necessary is now seen by humans as well as search engines as an obstacle, not as an invitation. The only place for splash pages is in multilingual websites, to give visitors a choice of language versions.
Conclusion
Most of these problems are due to nothing more than using obsolete techniques, and are typically found in elderly websites and those created by amateurs who haven’t learned how to do things properly.
Because there is almost always more than one way to achieve a visual effect, a web page can look fine on the surface while containing very poor code underneath. Most human visitors won’t notice whether a website is technically competent, but a search engine always will.
Search Engine Submission
The price you pay will include the submission of your website to all the main search engines, including:
You should be aware that no form of search engine optimisation produces guaranteed results. They, and the search engines themselves, have limitations.
Pay–Per–Click Advertising
Carefully monitored pay–per–click advertising, such as Google Adwords, is an efficient way of presenting your website to potential customers.
We are able to arrange and monitor pay–per–click advertising accounts. For full details, please see our Pay–per–Click Advertising page.