Search engine optimisation techniques

There are many techniques that a webmaster can use to expand their listings in a search engine. Depending upon the type of site that you are working with, some are more effective than others.

Offpage optimisation

Offpage optimisation deals with all the work that is done to optimise the site away from it. That means link building, advertising, product feeds etc.

Link building

Any web optimiser will tell you that link building is the most crucial area when it comes to building up traffic. If you have good links into your site then obviously people will directly link in from them but also your natural listings in search engines will rise. Choosing which sites to link to and which sites to obtain links from is the key here as search engines will follow a hereditary type path positioning you in accordance to your descendants/ascendants. For example, if you have a direct link in from the BBC, which is a highly ranked website because of its great content, then your site will be held in high regard because of this. Obtaining links from sites which have little or no content with relevance to your site will have no affect on your listings and may even hinder them.

Developing a strategy is a must and finding out about your competitors and about sites that offer really good relevant content to your site should be definite parts of this strategy. A good tip is to have a look at all the links that your rivals have acquired and sift through them to locate the good ones. To do this simply type in their URL into Google (example: http://www.google.com/search?q=competitors-url.com) and you should get a list of them.

In order to get links in quickly, submitting to directories is an easy procedure to undertake. There are thousands of them out there so it is pivotal that you choose the right one's to submit to. Many of them will require a reciprocal link in return which is not all that bad if they hold some relevance to your site and your customers/browsers will find their information useful. Dmoz is a well known directory and is probably the best one to get yourself listed on because of its reputation and pairing with Google. This however can prove to be difficult to get listed on as you are relying on an editor to firstly see your submission, secondly have enough time to look through the possibly thousands of them in their inbox and finally, and most crucially, approve it. If you make sure you abide by their guidelines when you're entering your submission, you should be OK but be prepared to wait...

When you start finding links from forums, blogs etc. into your site then you know that you are doing something right as people are obviously finding your site interesting and worthy of naturally creating a link for you!

Onpage optimisation

Onpage optimistation is everyting to do with the pages that you hold. Webmasters have 100% control over the way their websites are built, because of this it is good practise to get these optimisation skills down to a fine art during the sites development, ensuring the best results right from the word go.

Content is king

It is a fine art in itself being able to right good content. Learning where to place particular keywords, writing in clean easy to understand paragraphs and making sure it is actual useful information should be considered as your main priorities. If you hold useful information regarding a topic that is searched for substantially but has yet to be converted, therefore making it unique, you will be put in a great position for that particular subject. Also making it visually satisfying for the user will impress and might even get you bookmarked!

Coding

Code structure is something every programmer should consider themselves good at as otherwise, in my eyes, you wouldn't be much of one. Good valid css is important making it easier for you to build your site and ensuring that no bugs or errors appear when you use different browsers. Also I always try and make a point of creating valid xHTML. This may be considered a pedantic fault of mine but when a search engine comes and spider's a site, it will read it better if there are no faults within the html. You can check out your sites css and html validity at the World Wide Web Consortium where they also offer a number of useful tools and information.

Creating well worded page names is also a good way of getting extra keywords into your pages. Just make sure the page name's hold keywords you want to be found by and is of relevance to the content within and those words will add to that pages' keyword rank. Many people like to use directories as their page names for example http://monkey-tennis.com/homepage/ which works in just the same way. This can prove to be complicated when building a large site but can be simplified by using tricks such as htaccess in PHP or URLWreriter in .Net to control you url's more easily. This technique is also useful if you have a database of information and need each page name optimised.

Overall I would recommend making sure your content is interesting and of use to the billions of fellow surfers out there. Remember the world wide web is just an encyclopedia of knowledge and the more helpful for are at spreading this knowledge the more traffic you will get. If all else fails you could just pay for it..?

Search Engine Optimisation

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