Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation

• On page methodologies– Anything you can affect with the construction of a

single page

• Off page methodologies– Refers to all links (both from pages contained within

your own website and from pages of other websites) that point to your specific page(s).

– PageRank is the term used to describe off page criteria

On Page Methodologies

• Key Word Research– What key phrases customers would be using to look

for your products or services?– Analyse competitors pages to get an insight into what

are considered valuable key phrases – Tools such as Google Adwords Suggestion Tool

provides statistical data and historical search volume as well as suggests permutations of keywords

On Page Methodologies

• Site Structure– To maximise the potency of each page for its targeted

keyword search phrases optimise for a maximum of 3 keyword terms

– Determine which pages fit with which keywords, the name of each page reflects the most competitive keyword for that page

On Page Methodologies

• Optimising visible text– Words and phrases in H1, H2…H6 are given special

relevancy weight – Copy is written incorporating the chosen key phrases

throughout – It is worth bolding and italising keywords where

possible – It is important to keep initial keyword density to

between 3-7%.

On Page Methodologies

• Header– The header tags should include:– Title: A maximum of 3 keyword phrases and 55

characters– Meta Description: Describe your site repeating

keyword phrases (max 3) at least once while reflecting the true nature of the page and limiting it to 255 characters.

– Meta Keywords: Only permutations of keyword phrases should be placed here. Google practically ignores this tag.

– All javascript and css should be stored in external files.

On Page Methodologies

• Alt tags, Anchors and Links– alt="" and title="" attributes on images are a great way

to increase page density – If anchors are named using key phrases then this

increases our page density – All text including the URL in the HREF tag, as well as

the ‘title’ attribute, counts towards page density. Links are useful for on-page and off-page optimisation.

Off Page Methodologies

• PageRank– Once a site has been found by the Google spiders

through a link, Google uses an algorithm to calculate PageRank.

SEO Issues

• Frames

• Javascript

• Flash (Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK released)