Search engine
ranking optimisation techniques
There are many sites and companies on the web that claim to reveal all
the secrets of number one search engine ranking – at a price. The
truth is that it is impossible to guarantee a number one ranking as there
are many variables that will influence this result and no one knows every
one of them. The developers of the major search engines keep much of their
ranking algorithms secret to prevent abuse. However, while top ranking
cannot be guaranteed, it is not impossible to achieve and so is not unrealistic
to aim for that position. There are many things you can do to make this
a possibility with your site.
While there are unethical companies around offering site optimisation,
there are ones that are reputable and can help enhance your site’s
placement. If you decide to go with a company to optimise your site, make
sure you’re well informed about what they offer and what they intend
to do. Companies that promise number one or top five ranking in most search
engines within days, cannot be trusted. You will either pay for something
that does not happen or you will be paying for an unethical technique
that, in the long term, can damage your site’s credibility and can
result in a ban from search engines. More realistic expectations are numerous
top twenty rankings achieved within a period of weeks to months, depending
on the current status of your site.
This article is based on my research and experiences. It comes with no
guarantees, except to provide awareness into this area and hopefully a
better understanding of some of the things you should be doing with your
web site.
Site Design
Site design is not essential in search engine placement
but is worth a mention at the start because it should be an important
consideration when developing any site. You can have the ugliest site
on the web, terrible navigation and still achieve high rankings. Why?
Because search engines are programs that cannot tell how badly designed
your site is. However, people, not programs, are your intended audience.
So you need to make sure your site works for them. If not, number one
placement won’t have any benefit.
Content
When a search engine looks at your site, it sends
a program, called a spider, to browse through
all your links and collect information. Content is what spiders look for
when indexing your site into the search engines. It is important that
you have the appropriate content for your audience.
So what do I mean by content? TEXT, TEXT and TEXT.
Graphics are great to help make your site visually appealing and are essential
for good site design. But text is what the search engines love. Text is
how people will search for your site.
A photographer client of mine asked me how he could get his site better
ranked. His site had virtually no text within each page. Being a photographer,
he wanted to communicate to his potential clients through his work, the
photographs he had taken. Even when he did have a few words of text, they
were represented as an image. The result was that his site was very badly
indexed in all the major search engines.
While people may not like to spend an extended period of time reading
paragraphs of text in each page, it is important to include relevant text
for the search engine. A good balance of text for your audience and text
for the search engines is vital.
When I told the photographer he needed more text, he asked if he could
insert text into his site designed only for the search engines, not for
people to see. The answer is there are ethical and unethical ways to do
this. The ethical ways, such as in meta tags (which I will speak labout
ater), are not very effective. The unethical ways will get you into trouble.
Hidden text, where text is the same colour as your background, is a spamming
technique used to abuse the system. Spamming is a manipulation of the
search engine indexing process. Search engines will punish sites for employing
such techniques in the form of banning your site.
Keywords
Now you know you need text within your site, it
is important to choose the text carefully. Your text should be rich in
keywords relevant to your site and audience. Search engines will look
at what is called keyword density. Keyword density
is an indication of how often a keyword appears within a particular page.
If your site is about multimedia design, the search engine will look at
how many times 'multimedia' and 'design' appear within your text. Use
common sense about how rich your text should be with keywords. You don’t
want to have a page with the word 'multimedia' repeated 1000 times. This
can give the impression of abuse of the system, which can damage your
site’s credibility with the search engines.
Relevant keyword text is the most important criteria in search
engine ranking.
If your site over uses graphics, as the photographer example
I mentioned, or has dynamically delivered content (based on a database)
that the engine does not read, your chances of good placement are dramatically
reduced.
Ask yourself:
1. What words or phrases will people use to search for
my site?
2. What words do sites of a similar type to yours use?
3. What are the common words used in your industry, by
your customers, or in the subject your site relates to?
Body text
Just to emphasise the point I have already made
- Text is an essential component in site optimisation.
This text should appear within the body of your pages and MUST
include keywords and phrases that describe your business and what you
expect people to use when searching for your site.
Title tags
Page titling should be at the top of your list
when considering site optimisation. Search engines give it immense consideration.
The title is usually the sentence that is hyperlinked to your site in
the results pages of search engines. When a search is activated, it is
ideal if the words used in the search appear in your title. This will
increase the chance of a higher ranking.
I have created a site of Director tutorials. I am proud that it is number
one when you search in Google using: Director tutorial
or Director tutorials. However, if you search
Macromedia Director tutorials my site falls down the list. You
will notice at the top of this search is Macromedia Director -
Support Center Overview. Since the word Macromedia
appears in the title, whereas in mine it is missing, this page is ranked
higher than mine.
Meta-tags
Meta tags are text placed in your html code that
is hidden from the user but helps search engines identify what your site
is about. For example, you can create meta tags for page descriptions
and page keywords. Meta tags are no longer an important consideration
for search engines. Some search engines ignore them completely. The reason
being is that this is an area than can, and has been, abused. While meta
tags are not essential in site optimisation, it can’t harm your
site. It is generally a good idea to include meta tags that are relevant
in content to your site as search engine criteria may change and revisit
the use of meta-tags.
Link popularity
Many search engines look at how many other sites in their database are
linked to you. The number and quality of links to your site can influence
your ranking within a search engine.
Many sites offer affiliate linking to increase their link popularity and
yours. You link to their site and they link to you. This can sometimes
be a bad idea. Aim to get high quality links, ones from reputable sites.
If you do use affiliate linking, make sure you include links relevant
to your site and ensure they do not detract from the site and confuse
or annoy your visitors.
Directories vs search engines
A directory is an index of sites organised under
various topics. They are usually compiled manually. Looksmart
and Yahoo! are examples of directories.
Both require payment for listings. Open Director
(ODP) is a free directory and is worth submitting to. Directories
like ODP and Yahoo are used by search engines to supply sites for their
databases. Google is linked to ODP, so listing your site in this directory
will help your listing and ranking in Google.
There are thousands of search engines and directories. Some are rarely
used by visitors but links from them help your link popularity. Directories
require you to manually submit your site. It is a good idea to research
local directories as they often will list your site without any charge,
providing free publicity and increased link popularity.
There is software that allows you to submit to many search engines one
go. The result will be the same than if you manually submit your pages.
There are also sites that allow you to submit to many search engines together.
And of course, there are companies that will submit your site to search
engines for a fee. Whichever path you go with, ensure you submit your
site to the key search engines and directories, which include:
AltaVista, Google, HotBot, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos, Iwon, Fast/AllTheWeb, Direct
Hit, LookSmart, AOL, Overture/Excite, FindWhat, Netscape, About.com, Open
Directory, ICQSearch, AskJeeves and Jayde
The above list includes directories that require payment for submissions.
Yahoo! is a popular directory and listing in it will help your ranking.
However, since it is not cheap to list your site, you will need to decide
whether it is worth doing. A combination of free submissions and appropriate
paid submissions will be an effective approach.
Optimising individual pages for different
searches
It is a good idea to optimise different pages within
your site for a different type of search. For example, a site about marketing
may have a page on branding issues and another about customer service.
The branding page would be rich in keywords appropriate to this topic
and the title of the page would include relevant keywords or a key phrase.
Likewise, the customer service page would have its own page title and
set of keywords. It would not be a good idea to have the same general
title, such as marketing issues, for both pages.
By designing each page for a more focused search, your pages will be more
suitably indexed and you will get more visitors. You should not expect
that every potential visitor to arrive to your site at the front page.
Optimising different pages for different keywords allows you greater penetration
into search engines for each set of keywords. If you try optimise every
page in your site for every keyword that covers your business, your rankings
will stay low.
Use of frames
Sites designed with frames are not great for search
engines for a number of reasons:
1. Spiders can often have difficulty reading frames.
2. Frames don’t allow for unique titles for each
page.
3. Search engines can index one frame of your site, leaving
out your navigation frame, thus destroying your site design.
Flash sites
Flash sites are becoming very popular on the web.
I could write an article just on how Flash has been used inappropriately
and generally overused. But since this article is about search engine
placement, I’ll keep these views to a minimum.
From a search engine point of view, sites that are completely designed
in Flash, are problematic. I’ve just spoken about how text is vital
to site placement. Flash sites pose the problem of not allowing the search
engines access to the text. With the growing popularity of Flash, this
issue may change in the future. But for now, realise that a site in Flash-only
format, poses a problem for search engines.
Conclusion
This article touches on some of the key areas of
site optimisation. It is by no means comprehensive of every issue relating
to this topic. I hope it has given you some insight into this area. I
wish you all the best for your online presence.
If you have any feedback on this article, feel free to let us know at:
feedback@multimediacreative.com.au
©
2003 Multimedia Creative
