Search Engine Optimisation
Having a great website is no good if no-one knows where it is. You can publish your web address on any correspondence or within conventional advertising, but visitors will also look for you via search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing or one of many other search engines of directories - The big question is... will they find you?
The procedure of getting your website listed on a search for particular key words is known as Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. There are a great many companies who will offer this service, but be extremely wary of wild promises and guarantees of top listings.
There are a number of ways to get the ball rolling yourself, if you have an average level of computer knowledge.
1. Maximise your inbound links - also known as backlinks. The internet is essentially a web of interconnected websites, all linking to one-another. The best sites have more links directed towards them and so a site with more backlinks is consider by the search engines to be more "worthy" than one with fewer inbound links and as a consequence they will rank it more highly.
It's easy to check the number of inbound links for any site currently indexed by a search engine. Simply carry out a search for "site:www.yourdomain.com" replacing www.yourdomain.com with your web site's address.
2. Create a Site Map - A Sitemap is a file containing a list of each page of your site which can be easily read by the search engines. The Sitemap could be a straighforward text file or a more detailed xml file. These are easy to create and upload to your web space using many free, sitemap generators such as XML-Sitemaps.com.
3. Use the free Search Engine Tools - The search engines provide free tools for webmasters to help submit and manage the way a website is indexed. Have a look at Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer or Microsoft Live Webmaster Center.
Each enable you to submit your website and sitemaps for indexing.
4. Ensure that the text of your website contains all of the important keywords. Pay particular attention to the title and description metatags within the page header and the displayed headings on your page.
For more information, take a look at Google's Webmaster Guidelines for hints and tips to make your web pages more search engine friendly.
The procedure of getting your website listed on a search for particular key words is known as Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. There are a great many companies who will offer this service, but be extremely wary of wild promises and guarantees of top listings.
There are a number of ways to get the ball rolling yourself, if you have an average level of computer knowledge.
1. Maximise your inbound links - also known as backlinks. The internet is essentially a web of interconnected websites, all linking to one-another. The best sites have more links directed towards them and so a site with more backlinks is consider by the search engines to be more "worthy" than one with fewer inbound links and as a consequence they will rank it more highly.
It's easy to check the number of inbound links for any site currently indexed by a search engine. Simply carry out a search for "site:www.yourdomain.com" replacing www.yourdomain.com with your web site's address.
2. Create a Site Map - A Sitemap is a file containing a list of each page of your site which can be easily read by the search engines. The Sitemap could be a straighforward text file or a more detailed xml file. These are easy to create and upload to your web space using many free, sitemap generators such as XML-Sitemaps.com.
3. Use the free Search Engine Tools - The search engines provide free tools for webmasters to help submit and manage the way a website is indexed. Have a look at Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer or Microsoft Live Webmaster Center.
Each enable you to submit your website and sitemaps for indexing.
4. Ensure that the text of your website contains all of the important keywords. Pay particular attention to the title and description metatags within the page header and the displayed headings on your page.
For more information, take a look at Google's Webmaster Guidelines for hints and tips to make your web pages more search engine friendly.
Labels: seo
posted by Jon Langford at
08:40
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