Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

by Andy Carroll, 13 Jul 2011

Search Engine Robots and Spiders

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing use robotic webpage readers or "spiders" which follow links around the internet and save copies of what they find in an "index" or catalogue. When someone searches using the search engine the keywords are checked against the catalogue or "index" and the positive matches are used to generate the search engine results page (SERP).

Search Engine Optimisation Processes

Search engine optimisation (SEO) involves various processes to improve the position of your website in the search engine results page for given keywords. This can include adding the target keywords into page content, headings and images and also ensuring that often overlooked but important areas are optimised with these keywords for example the

tag.

Target Keywords

Being No. 1 for a keyword is not always appropriate for the best results. More important is the choice of keyord to target. It may be that your No. 1 results don't actually ever appear to customer because they use alternative search terms.

Website Crawlability

Likewise your pages may be well optimised but are never visited by the search spiders. Your site should be developed to be search engine friendly. This will include having your pages available as a hyperlink from one or more pages on the site. At least one of the page's inbound hyperlinks will be in a standard html format which is not generated from Flash or JavaScript. Page redirecting techniques should be used with care to ensure the spider does not ignore the destination page. Links as a result of form submissions or JavaScript are not usually followed by search spiders so should only ever be used as secondary navigation.

Importance of Content

Content is a very important part of search engine rank, for any web page to rank well for a keyword. The page should contain a good body of text which contains the keyword and the keywords should also appear in titles and headings.

Inbound Links

A link from a remote website to your website is seen by search engines as a sign of approval. The more reputable the site the link appears on the better. These accumilate to give your page points score and this is taken into account particularly by Google in your search engine result position.

Reputation Built over Time

It can take 12 months or more to gain quality organic search results. This is because the age of a website and it's content is factored into your search engine result position.

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