Internet Publishing and Search Optimisation; Are you at the top?

17 Feb 2005

Your website may be perfectly presented and have all the content required for your customers, but how can you ensure that when browsers search the internet looking for your products and services that your website not only features on the first page of the results, but that it is at the top? 

The DPA in conjunction with Academy Internet ran a course, with over 40 participants, on 28 January 2005, to divulge and discover how you can ensure that your website is reaching the top on search engines.

It highlighted that between 80-85 per cent of websites are sourced through search engines, approximately 90 per cent of searches take place on the top five search engines (including Google, Yahoo and MSN) and surprisingly over 90 per cent of sites are not optimised.

So how do search engines work?  Robots and spiders trawl though websites reading the html tags, picking up on heading styles and font formats, as well as following links and absorbing content. It is this digested information which helps rank the site and its information. Content is king and tagging is vital. Keywords and phrases are used to determine the ‘theme’ of the website - therefore the position; repetition and relevance between words within the site all help build a picture of the key areas. A site map is also very important, as spiders crawl through the pages, a site map should cover all the areas of the site and the links embedded will enhance its ranking.  Using optimised words for the links is essential.  Never write 'click here' to find out more!!

Did you know? Spiders will not read CSS (cascading style sheets) or Java Script, they cannot read Flash and if the website is built using frames, it will be almost impossible to be listed on any search engine. 

Are you in trouble? Spiders and search engines do not like cloaking (making out to search engines that a website is something that it isn’t – perceiving it to be of another subject matter), duplicating pages, embedding invisible text (same colour text as the background of the site). This can lead to the entire website being blacklisted.

Also covered were the benefits of Pay Per Click Advertising. Simple to implement, where you are in control of the position and branding of your ad and where you can qualify your leads as well as continually monitor your effectiveness were all advantages highlighted in this form of advertising. The position is important, but do not overlook important phrases linked to your business, think out of the box and look for bargain phrases that you can bid for, as this will help list you higher in the search. While a very successful ad can hike up the costs of the overall placement, compared to other forms of advertising the return of investment is significant.

Jo-Ana Thomas from RBI Search - www.kellysearch.com, also gave the participants an insight into Reed's experiences, shared knowledge and gave tips; reiterating many of the practical points that were covered in the course. She emphasised that the beauty of the internet is its flexibility - be prepared to try something new, evaluate and if need be change – even minor changes can make major differences. Optimise and review, optimise and review!