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Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation is a combination of skills that all need to work together to gain the best results.

Technical Coding

Having well written code that validates is vital to SEO. It also needs to be the correct type of code. i.e. HTML or xhtml. Search Engine Spiders only really read these two types of markup well, so it is important to give them what they want if you want to be indexed.

By all means use Flash and AJAX to liven things up but make sure there is enough around them for spiders to eat. Search Engine optimisation will fail without spider food!

Bells and whistles may look great but if they can’t be indexed nobody will appreciate your skill.

Copywriting

Content is king as far as web pages are concerned and must be focused towards the customer. The old marketing mantra of “selling the benefits” most certainly still applies. According to research you have between 25-35 seconds once someone arrives at your page to “sell the benefits”.

Your copy also needs to be written with search engine optimisation in mind as web spiders will judge your relevance partly by the density and code position of your keywords and phrases.

XML Sitemaps

Getting your site properly indexed is key to search engine optimisation and XML sitemaps automate and speed up submission. They also help search engines understand the relative importance of your pages. Going without one is not recommended.

Back links

Getting links in to your site can really help SEO. However you need to be careful as to their provenance. There are operations out there that will offer you back links but they really need to be relevant to your business area and your geographical area.

I’ve found some that work really well in the UK simply by looking at search engine results pages [SERPS].

PDF’s, images and video files

Since the introduction of Google’s universal search, SERPS no longer just return web pages in your search results. Results now include everything that Google thinks is relevant to your search, be it web pages, PDF’s, images or video files.