What not to do with Search Engines

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Search engines can only read visible text. They do not have eyes so they cannot see the pictures.

Therefore, it is very important that the visible text of the web site is optimised for both the viewing public and the search engines. This is a tricky balancing act in many cases.

The principle of this is to ensure that the important word and phrase searches from which you want your site to appear within search engines, are mentioned in the text on with density, and the text must also read naturally for the viewing public.

Search engines additionally use the title and description tags to compare to the site text, and so to get the best ranking you should have the words and phrases in the text, the title and the description tag.

What do search engines hate?

Flash, ‘heavy' graphics and doorway pages - why? Because there is little or no text on the page and search engines cannot read graphics or flash movies at present, as mentioned earlier.

A Doorway page is where a page is created purely for the purpose of trying to manipulate search results and contains a copy of other content to try to trick the search engine. This normally links the visitor through to another site, and as such contains no unique content of value to the search engine.

Link farms - designed to contain links solely for promotional purposes rather than to enhance visitors use of the site can be considered ‘spam' and should be avoided.

Why can't we use hidden text and tags?

Some years ago, search engine optimisation consisted of putting a group of phrases together with as many repetitions as possible to make up a ‘keywords' tag and, if necessary, to put the same as text hidden at the bottom of the pages. This was very easy and seemed ideal except that (as always with such arrangements) some people over used this and as a result the system got horribly abused. Accordingly, search engines have been gradually moving away from such methods and into more obvious, display based methods. The effect of this is that the actual ‘keywords' tag is useless now and hidden text is likely to get your site banned from the search engines as opposed to helping it! How to create an effective set of words and phrases

Include as much information as possible relating to what people would look for, ie. what text do you use in yellow pages adverts?,

Then prioritise this information and combine with regional/geographic references and use this to create a title tag. This should equate to approximately 50 words (maximum, less is preferable in many cases). You should then create a description tag, which is based upon the same words and phrases but expands upon the title with some 'supporting text'.

Finally (and most importantly) ensure that the words and phrases in the title and description are also used in the text of the web site, ideally in a prominent position such as a title or sub-heading where possible. If you try to cover a large range of varying terms then you are less likely to be sucessful, pick a small range of terms highly relevant to your business for best results.

What are the alternatives?

Pay-Per-Click (AdWords) which is a bid auction that allows you to bid on a search term (or group of terms) and to offer to make a payment for each person who clicks on your advert. Only the top bidders adverts get displayed for any given search phrase.

We currently offer this as a service for our clients, We are able to advise on your use of this alternative if you think this may be of use within your marketing strategy.