Search engine optimisation at no cost

Optimisation of websites for search engines is still viewed by many as a bit of a black art. However, there are a number of excellent websites around that have broken the myth and illustrated how it is possible to get great results by following a few simple steps. This article should be read by those looking for an introduction into how search engines work and covers the main points that one should follow when designing a site that aims to bring in traffic from search engines.

Search Engines: Crawlers vs Directories. The term search engine is used indiscriminately to describe two very different types of search facility that exist. Crawlers, such as Google, automatically “crawl” the web creating listings of websites that users can then search through. Directories on the other hand, such as Open Directory Project, are human-edited listings of the web. Information is submitted for each site via forms and the search results on these directories are displayed to users based on the limited details that were written about the site on submission, and not on the site’s entire content. It is important to draw this distinction as any optimisation of a website will only affect the results from crawler-based search engines and not directories. With this in mind the first thing to do is to decide on your search engine strategy.

Search engine strategies. There are numerous software products and websites around that are able to submit sites to thousands of search engines. However, when you consider that referrals to most websites are dominated by Google, Yahoo and Inktomi (for one simple quantitative analysis look at Jakob Nielsen’s excellent site: http://www.useit.com/about/searchreferrals.html) then it is worth spending time getting your site listed on these directories before you start to think about the other smaller niche search engines. Decide what search engines are important to you and then concentrate your efforts on getting good results with these first.

No Content = No Results. It can’t be stressed enough that only sites with good content will start to get hits from search engines. So before you start spending any time on your search engine results, make sure that you’ve got something worth visiting.

Meta Data: Title, Keywords and Description. Meta data are special HTML tags that are very important to search engines but are hidden from the user by a web browser. There are numerous types of meta data that can be included within web pages, but to get good search results the title, description and keywords tags are the ones to concentrate on. It’s possible to write a whole article on these tags alone but the most important points are: 1 - Titles are extremely important to Google and many other crawlers so get these correct and don’t go overboard with the amount of text they contain. 2 - The description tag must make sense as it is the text that many search engines display in their results to users. 3 – Key words are less important these days so don’t spend too much time on them, but enter words in order of preference and don’t bother to use any more than once.

Make friends with the search engine. There are a number of elements that can be big stumbling blocks for search engines and should generally be avoided from the design of sites. Links are a major item: these should be in html (not from image maps) and if possible should not contain symbols like “?” and “&”. One effective way to make sure that crawlers can find all the pages on your site is by having a site index on your homepage which links to every other page - this has the added advantage of helping users find their way around. One final stumbling block for search engines is the use of frames within the site design as many are unable to follow the links from frames correctly.

Get crawled. 1 - Make sure that you manually submit your site to the major search engines as this is far more effective than automated software. 2 - Get as many external links to your website as possible as this will help crawlers find your site. This has the added bonus that many search engines (including Google) analyse the number of links to your site when measuring its importance and this is one effective way of increasing your ranking.

Analyse. Don’t forget that the Internet is a dynamic place and what might work today won’t necessarily work tomorrow. It’s important that you regularly analyse your site’s logfiles (records of who visited your site and how they found you). Use this information to provide feedback as to what is working and what is not and tweak your content and meta data accordingly. If your results still prove disappointing it’s always helpful to take a closer look at websites that are performing well and try to determine what it is that makes them successful.

Finally, remember that search engines are not the miracle solution to driving traffic to your website. A large majority of visitors will go directly to your site because they have done business with you previously or have found you through more traditional marketing methods. It’s extremely important not to neglect this part of web site promotion, otherwise you’ll be in danger of missing a crucial part of the marketing mix.