Search Engine Optimisation: Dark Art or pure science?
Search Engine Optimisation - An Introduction
Perpetuated by search engines’ reluctance to reveal the algorithms they use to rank websites in their search results, the art of search engine optimisation still retains an element of early-days darkness in many people’s perception. But experience now enables us to be more scientific in ensuring that a website achieves an optimum profile on any given search engine. This article outlines some of the considerations required in the development, and subsequent management, of a website to achieve such a profile.
What is Search Engine Optimisation and why is it so important?
Web search is the second most common use of the Internet after email, so at any one time there are millions of people searching for products and services online. To be able to tap into just a fraction of this traffic – and it must be the right fraction – can be extremely lucrative, but web searchers need to be able to find your site quickly. Often searchers will not look beyond the first page of search results so your website needs to be listed on this page to stand a good chance of being selected. To appear on the first page of results, a website must be as search engine ‘friendly’ as possible. This is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes into play.
Search engine optimisation alone won’t guarantee a first page listing, but as a discipline is crucial for both ensuring the pages of your website are indexed by search engines in the first place, and for ensuring that your site is favourably ranked thereafter. Investing in an effective search engine optimisation programme can help set up your site to succeed and will allow your business to reap the ongoing benefits of free (i.e. not generated by paid advertising), yet targeted, traffic.
The mechanics of search engine optimisation are becoming increasingly complex as competition compels search engines to become more effective in the way they deliver information to searchers; this against a background of a continuing explosion in the number of web pages in existence. Advertising revenue aside, a search engine’s objective is to provide what has been described by one leading commentator as ‘information satisfaction’: to provide the searcher with the best possible results match against their search criteria. After all, it is the quality - not quantity - of search results that will encourage a searcher to continue to use a particular search engine. Just ask Google.
Search engine technology basics
Search engines find and index pages by using software robots called ‘spiders’ or ‘crawlers’. A robot is a program that looks for web pages and follows links to find information to index in a search engine’s database.
It is essential to give these robots every opportunity to crawl your website by using simple, clear and descriptive page addresses or ‘URLs’ (Uniform Resources Locators). URLs containing multiple parameters with question marks and ampersands will have a lower probability of being crawled by a robot. Many website Content Management Systems and database-driven websites create URLs which are not optimised for search engines, which can reduce visitor traffic dramatically.
The preferred links for search engines are text links. Links which are slightly more complex, such as JavaScript (code used to drive pop-ups or drop-down menus on the site), are not preferred.
What are the factors that determine search engine rankings?
For a website to be able to achieve a prominent position on a search engine listing it must be designed and built to be highly “visible” to search engines. Exceptionally popular websites can rely on sheer volumes of traffic to achieve a high ranking, but most sites have to rely on more subtle techniques to achieve an optimal ranking, especially in a highly competitive marketplace.
We know that there are typically one hundred or more factors taken into account by search engines when ranking web pages, but search engines do not disclose their ranking algorithms - which they refine frequently anyway – so there is a certain amount of ‘trial and error’ involved from a website owner’s point of view. However, although search engine optimisation theory is a complex science, using a holistic approach to website development and management will help to ensure that many of the main factors we know influence the ranking of a website are taken in consideration.
Amongst these factors, search engines will evaluate website content and links from third party websites when prioritising search results. In more detail:
a) Content
Content is paramount to search engines in building a profile of the website. The ‘richer’ and more relevant your site’s content, the greater the likelihood that your pages will be ranked higher than your competitors’.
A website should have a good proportion of words: a page with a high proportion of graphics or large areas of white space and minimal text will not rank highly. Pages containing 250-500 words rank well.
The content of a web page should be written with the aim of making it ‘friendly’ to search engines, hence it is important to insert in the copy keywords - or more importantly keyword phrases - that are more likely to be used by internet users to search your for website. Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others provide online keyword suggestion tools. Using those tools you can build up a list of keyword phrases, which you can include in your website copy.
It is essential that the keyword phrases are spread throughout the copy. Ideally, target keywords should appear somewhere in the opening paragraph. They should also appear towards the end, with some inclusions spread throughout the length of the page. But too much repetition of keywords has a negative impact in the eyes of search engines and indeed the practice of keyword ‘stuffing’ will either lower a ranking or, worse, might cause your website to be excluded form search results altogether.
Search engines will consider titles, headings and other key components of a webpage as important in determining the context of a page. Therefore it is essential that the same keyword phrases are used in the titles and headings wherever possible.
Search engines will also look at many other areas of a page which include, but are not necessarily limited to, text in bold, link text and bullet points.
Also keep in mind that search engines will consider the currency of the content on your website. Text which is often updated is considered to be of higher value so it is essential to update the text on a website regularly to achieve, and maintain, a higher ranking.
b) Third party links to your website
Search engines will assess the number and relevance of links to your website. Links from third party websites are considered by search engines to be a vote of confidence. Although by definition hard to control, it is recommended that each site which links to your website has relevance to the content of your website. Google offers a tool which identifies reverse links, so it is not difficult to monitor linking sites.
Search engine optimisation does not work overnight
It is very unlikely that applying search engine optimisation best practice will bring you overnight success. Search engines move at their own speed so results usually only come after 3-6 months. Therefore it is advised also to consider other online marketing tools to increase traffic to your website. ‘Pay per click’ might be the answer, as it has the potential to drive quality traffic to your website immediately.