Optimising Content for Search Engines

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an inexpensive way to improve your rankings in search engines such as Google. Not to be confused with the more costly Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which involves pay per click campaigns and paid advertising (notice the emphasis on the verb to pay!), SEO is the practice of optimising your website's content. Visibly this is the structural, textual and navigational content your site visitors will be presented with and, invisibly this is valid html code, appropriate URL formatting, web technologies used (to Flash or not to Flash?), and so on..

This organic approach to achieving higher search engine visibility involves effort and careful planning, ideally before you even start to build you website. Although your content and structure aren't set in stone and can still be optimised when already built.

Tackling the invisible...Using a good content management system can handle a lot of the invisible SEO aspects for you such as, ensuring your content makes use of correct HTML tags for headings, uses Alt Text for images, accurate page titles, URL formatting, etc. Click to learn more about content managed websites or view examples in our web design portfolio.

Tackling the visible...This aspect of Content Optimisation involves more thought and research; you must align your content with your target market and your selected keyword phrases. You need to deliver content that is useful and attractive to your target markets whilst ensuring you use carefully selected keywords that you think they might use to search for you.

SEO Keyword phrases

Keywords and keyword phrases are the terms by which your users will search for and find your site in search engines. Generally key phrases are much more useful in achieving better ranking results than keywords because, individual words are much more competitive, less descriptive of your site's content/goals, and your users are much more likely to search using phrases.

For example, when selling soles for trainers; You will achieve much better results for the phrase buy trainer soles than the keyword sole which will likely bring up fish as much as shoe soles in a search engine results page.

Do your keyword research... The web is awash with free tools so that you can map out your keyword strategy e.g Google analytics, Google trends, Google Optimiser; sorry they don't all begin with Google! I'm just trotting off the easiest ones to remember.

How search engines work

Search engines, such as Google, use spiders to find and rank websites for their search results. Search engine spiders will crawl through your website, moving between pages via your navigational links, before hopefully indexing your site. They 'read' your html content, not only the obvious paragraphs of text but also the names of your graphics, internal and external links, etc. Calculating the level of your site's ranking comes into play as the spider builds up a weighting for certain phrases it finds within the page, hence the importance of your keyword selection and density of use. Alas the spiders are simple souls and are blind to your site's visual appearance. They can only read content that is clearly presented and accessible to them. On the plus side, this means the more informational content you provide, containing your targeted keyword phrases, the better. On the down side spiders cannot read information provided in images (never use images in place of headings or other page text), and will struggle or be unable to read content created with frames, ASP, Flash, extensive use of Javascript and so on.

What can sdesign1 do for you?

We can help you in as many aspects of your search engine optimisation strategy as you wish. Whether it be advising you in your keyword choice, building your site from the ground up using a content management system, optimising your web content for you or evaluating an existing website on its SEO levels and providing you with recommendations.

How we can help:

• Create well structured and valid HTML code
• Provide appropriately formatted URLs
• Provide a "Site map" which links to every page on the website helping spiders crawl their way through your content
• Ensure that Pages are accessible to spiders i.e. work without Javascript, Cookies, Sessions, images not used in place of text, etc.
• Optimise the layout/design - Use images appropriately, provide space on the page for textual content, a navigational system that links to all pages of the site
• Research and suggest optimal keyword phrases - matching them to your target market and the services you offer.
• Help you create your content - including your keywords/keyphrases as often as appropriate
• Backlinking - Get links from relevant websites back to yours (that is getting text links, using your keywords, embedded in content on relevant websites which cover the same or similar topics to yours). We do not use link exchange schemes which can do more harm than good to your search ranking!
• Submit your website to online directories such as DMOZ, business listings, local listings, etc.
• Develop your social presence with social networking, e.g. facebook, bebo, myspace. twitter etc
• Increase your online content and presence in forums, news websites, blogs, etc.
• SEO evaluations of existing site with suggested improvements to increase your site's ranking and traffic.

We're happy to build a package that meets your needs so please feel free to contact us by filling in the form below. Alternatively, call us on 0151 223 0001 for a free no obligation chat.