Search Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is part good web site construction practice and part full time professional occupation. 

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The question is how many different searches do you want to rank top ten for and what are you prepared to do to get there and stay there.

Vivid Web Site Search Optimisation Action Plan

This is a prioritised list of actions for web site search visibility. We focus on organic search results first before engaging with paid strategies. A well structured website with quality relevant text content can do extremely well in search results over the long term all by itself. Once in place the options for extra search optimisation via paid methods can be evaluated from a solid standing. 

Phase 1: identify your customers’ key search words
Phase 2: build your key terms into your site 
Phase 3: be active outside of your domain
Phase 4: pay for links and search results 

Search Engines

It is likely that you may have received notices invitiing you to pay a fe to have your website listed with “over 400 search engines!”. There is a list of search engines here. In Australia Google has over 80% of the market then there is Yahoo and Bing and Ask. 

http://searchenginewatch.com/links/

Search Key Words

Primary search words:

What is the primary search term core to your service you wish to achieve maximum google and yahoo ranking for? [insert your primary key word here].

Secondary search words or phrases:

This is called the long tail approach. Any page on your website can be found so specific searches can result in pages deep within your website being found by uncommon requests. [insert your secondary key words and phrases here].

Search Key Word Tools

Excellent Tools for checking key words are available at:
Google Search Based Keyword Tool 
Wordstream Keyword Niche Finder  
Search Engine Optimisation Toolkit 

Web Site Environment

1 Domain Name

Use primary key words in the domain name title. Keep short and specific. Hyphens can be used to separate the words.
Action: Register domain name with key word in it: www.ina.com.au for domain name registration

2 Hosting

Hosting the files on a shared domain could cause a problem if you neighbor is running a dodgy business . (search engines note the nationality of the IP address). Hosting Requirements T3 or better connection, outage safeguards, Service Level Agreement (95% + guaranteed uptime).

Site Construction

3 Page Titles

Page Titles: Primary key word loading (60 characters for Yahoo, 65 Looksmart, 100 characters Open Directory) Best practice suggests it should be kept lower than 65 characters for page titles.

4 Meta Tags

Page Description: make it descriptive and compelling and less than 105 characters. This is the information displayed that describes the page in the search engine results. Yahoo 25 words or 200 characters, 170 characters Looksmart and 25 to 30 words open Directory.

Keywords: Carefully selected phrases people will use in their searches related to the content on the (less than 1024 characters). Different key words per page. Key words from the page’s text is best. Use lower case.

5 Page Content and Construction

Compose the page text using keywords loaded towards the top of the page. Repeat the keywords in headings or intro text on the page. Make sure they appear on the home page at least twice. Attempt 3 - 20% density in the page copy. Use keywords in; H1 Headings, H2 Headings and text.

Additional keywords to be loaded into the website coding.  

• Alt tags for images (include key words where possible)
• Search Engine Friendly addresses for dynamic pages
• Link out to other related websites. (The closer to your page topic the better)
• Text links/anchors made from the key words
• Site Map (linked from welcome page).
• Search engine analytics algorithms.
• robots.txt file current

Action: Create a list of websites to link to. Links written to exploit feature.

External Influences

6 Off-site Optimisation or outside linking.

Social networking is more important than ever before and provides a great opportunity for you to be found either directly from the social network or by providing more exposure to your site. Search engines regard links to your website as independent votes for it. The more popular the voting website the better. The Social network delivers traffic that may not have looked via search and has the added bonus of personal recommendation. Be there. 

Action: Establish links to your site via industry connections and social networking communities. Note this is not a technical issue but one of personal contacts and industry associations.

Search Engines and Directories

7 Registration

Submitting websites to the top three search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask) and to the Open Directory (DMOZ) project. These are free listings and easily done by anybody.  
Action: Submit 3-4 key pages.

8 Paid Advertising links

Google Adwords, Google Adsense and Sponsored Links

Top Search Engines

Google 10 billion pages indexed,
Yahoo Inktomi's search engine with Yahoo directory
Walhello 680 million pages indexed and growing fast
WiseNut 1.5 billion pages (they say) sorted into folders
Teoma Google challenger, very intelligent folder sorting
Seekz clean, fast, accurate

Directories
LookSmart the biggest directory (but only just)
Yahoo World's No.1 web site
Open Directory over 3 million entries - edited by people

Meta-Search – searches multiple sources
Search66 AltaVista, AOL/Netscape, DMOZ, Espotting, FAST, HotBot & Yahoo!
Vivisimo MSN, Netscape, Lycos, Looksmart & BBC, sorted into folders.
Ixquick combines results from 10 engines + highlights keywords in pages
Zap Meta AltaVista, Yahoo, AllTheWeb, WiseNut, MSN, HotBot, Gigablast, DMOZ, AOL
Zworks Open Directory, Yahoo, Alltheweb + 7 others
Surfwax 11 engines, extra site info.
Hotbot Allows you to quickly switch between the search results of AlltheWeb, Google, Inktomi and Teoma
Ithaki good for regional searching
Fazzle Lycos, Teoma, WiseNut, Yahoo, MSN, Netscape
ilectric results have links to archived, translated and proxified versions of each site. Plus a few images

Google vs AlltheWeb
Google vs Yahoo A tool that gives a visual representation of how closely the results of each match - or not