Search engines, spiders & SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) is the process of increasing a websites ranking in search engines for relevant search words or phrases. I can provide reports, advice, or the actual optimisation of a website itself depending on requirements.

Search engines, such as Google, take into account many factors when ranking a website - everything from the name of your domain to the individual words that are on each page. These factors can be categorised into content and inbound linking.

Content is King

Search engine spiders (the programs that crawl sites) will look at all the content on your website to help determine how relevent your website is compared to each search. The content is everything a search engine can see on your site including page titles, headings, paragraphs, links and so on. So it is important to have plenty of search engine readable and keyword rich content in your site.

Search engines may have problems reading the content on your site. Some of the frequent mistakes include Flash based content which search engines don't read, search engine unfriendly navigation, keyword stuffing and frame based design.

Inbound Linking

So you have some good, readable, keyword rich content on your website but it is still not ranking so well for relevant key phrases. The next step should be to build up the inbound links.

Inbound linking is when another website links to your site. Search engines will see a website with many links as being a better resource than a similar website with fewer links, so the more links you have to your site and the higher the quality of these links, the better.

Working to a budget, I can recommend and implement ways of building up inbound links which will increase your website ranking, driving more traffic to your site. This can include the following:

  • Submitting your site to free directories.
  • Getting your site listed in paid directories - some have a small one off charge but others will charge monthly or yearly.
  • Getting your site listed on industry specific directories.
  • Google Adwords - this has an in-direct effect on increasing a website ranking.
  • Link exchanging with non-competitor but related sites.

Please contact me to find out how I can help increase your site in search engines.