Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engines
For many websites, search engines are the single most important source of traffic. A high ranking result in a major search engine on popular keywords will yield thousands, or even tens of thousands, of visitors per day. But high ranking pages don't come by luck or accident. To submit your website to the search engines and assume the traffic will just start flowing is a serious mistake. You will be one of tens of thousands submitted on that day, one of hundreds of thousands spidered that day, and one of hundreds of millions (possibly billions) already contained in that search engine's index. That's how competitive it is.

Search engines have changed dramatically over the last couple of years in a bid to become more profitable, making it increasingly difficult to get into many of them for free. Some now have a pay-for-inclusion scheme or display other paid-for listings before their own search results, which at times, can make it difficult to know exactly where the search results you're looking at, actually came from!

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
It's essential that you spend either some time or money in optimising your pages for search engines before submitting them, otherwise your pages may well end up buried beneath millions of others and your submission time will have been wasted. Top 10 positions on most of the search engines will yield a substantial level of traffic (depending, of course, on how popular your keywords are) and top 30 positions may be useful.

Achieving a high ranking position on a search engine depends on several considerations which vary from one search engine to another. Factors considered by search engines are the placement and frequency of keywords in the page and HTML, the number of words and links used in the document, and a growing trend is the increased emphasis on how many other websites link to yours. These factors vary considerably between the search engines, so a page that performs well on one, may not on another. In very competitive markets, it may be necessary to have several variations of the same page tailored to the preferences of different search engines.

Search Engine Optimisation Services
Optimising pages for search engines is time consuming even for the experienced, especially since any popular keywords and phrases will already have been saturated. If your own time is valuable, then employ a professional web promotion and marketing company. They should achieve results far sooner than a novice and the cost should be recouped from the additional traffic and revenue that they generate.

Before engaging the services of a SEO company, seek advice from several different sources. Many SEO companies will make false claims about their ability and what is necessary to obtain a high ranking webpage in order to secure your business.

There are services to suit every budget, but remember that you only get what you pay for so don't expect much from a really cheap service. Ask for some reference websites, the keywords used, and the search engines upon which these website rank well. Look at the keyword examples that they supply you with; I've seen some outfits touting examples of obscure keyword combinations that are bound to perform well simply because no-one is searching on them. No good being top 10 if you're the only one looking at it. This is where the WordTracker service can be useful in determining the number of searches performed on a particular search engine.

Website Optimisation Software
As far as I'm aware, WebPosition Gold from 1st Position Software is the only software package currently available that offers in-depth webpage analysis and you can download a trial version of the software. If you're aware of any alteratives, then please let me know.

I personally use WebPosition Gold which offers a number of very useful features to optimise and submit your webpages; a submitter, webpage critic, traffic analyzer, scheduler, upload manager and reporter. I only tend to use the webpage critic, preferring to submit webpages manually. The critic has some really excellent features that enable you to analyse a webpage for optimisation relevant to the search engine of your choice. It will also perform a comparison between your webpage and another top ranking one, producing a very clear and well annotated table that breaks down the webpages into the key areas where keywords can make a difference.

WebPosition offers advice on keyword loading, frequency and word placement for the different areas of the webpage from its knowledge base which is regularly updated. 1st Place Software conduct thousands of searches on the major search engines and provide the analysis of these search results in the form of averages for keyword density. This information is made available through subscription to the knowledge base, which downloads to WebPosition automatically when a new version becomes available and you're online. WebPosition Gold costs $149, which includes 90 days free knowledge base updates, thereafter knowledge base updates are $99 per year. Not bad for all the information it provides you with.

Website Optimisation Tips and Tools
Got plenty of time on your hands and fancy some DIY website promotion? Then take a look at some of the websites which provide a vast number of resources including meta tag generators, keyword analysis, url checkers, referal checkers, url submitters and advice.

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