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Optimising Your Site
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be a difficult and time-consuming task. Results are not
always easily defined and may need some time to take full effect. Search engines also change
their guidelines regularly thereby creating uncertainty when trying to optimise a site. However
there are several optimisation techniques that can be undertaken that should assist in improving
rankings in the major search engines. These can be summarised as follows:
- Determining and applying relevant keywords
- Obtaining links from other sites
- Optimising your HTML code
- Adding suitable and relevant content
We’ll look further at keywords and links in future articles in this series. In this article
however, we’ll look at how you can amend the HTML code of your website to improve the chances of
a search engine favourably reviewing and ranking your site. We’ll also look at how adding
suitable content will greatly improve your chances of a higher ranking.
Optimising Your Code
Over the last few years, the major search engines have continued to reassess the way that they
rank websites. It is becoming increasingly difficult to “trick” a search engine to artificially
inflate the rank of a particular site. The search engines continue to strive for achieving the
most relevant results possible in order to maintain their popularity with users. Ensuring that
your website’s HTML complies with some relatively common standards will go a long way towards
achieving substantially improved rankings. These include:
- Ensure that search engine spiders can access all pages of your site
- Make sure that all pages link to another page
- Link Text should include main search terms
- Title Tag should preferably include page’s search term at front of title
- Meta Description Tag should include at least one reference to intended keyword
- Meta Keywords Tag should list all relevant keywords present in the general text
- Heading Tag should include important keywords
- Text should include several references to keywords and phrases
- Bold Text should include main search terms whenever possible
- Alt Text (images) should include relevant search terms
Content
Having good quality and relevant content is becoming one of the most important factors used by
search engines in ranking sites. Content needs to relate to identified keywords which should
ideally be included at the beginning of a page. Creating a separate page for each targeted
keyword is becoming a major optimisation practice. The content needs to include the keyword
throughout the text, but overuse should be avoided as it can be considered as spam by most of
the major search engines. While creating content using identified keywords is becoming
accepted practice, it is also important to ensure that the content is readable and informative.
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Copyright 2003-2008 Ausnetech Pty Ltd A.B.N. 35 104 843 450
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