Optimising your Web pages for search engines

Warning: if you're looking for cheats - look elsewhere

There are lots of things you can do to make your Web pages more search engine friendly - but if you're looking for tricks, cheats and scams - don't look here.

The best search engine results come from good practice, not from using cheats. (If you want to find out about the most-used search engine tricks, and why they don't work, read the associated briefing: search engine tricks - and why they are not worth using.)

Work with search engines, not against them

It's not in the interest of search engines to provide poor results. To be successful, search engines have to provide relevant search results. So, to get the best out of them, you have to work with them not against them. The goal is to create Web pages which are 'search engine friendly'.

Keyword repetition - the core to success

Keyword repetition is the most misunderstood search engine concept. The majority of people interpret it literally, believing that the more you repeat certain keywords, the higher you will rank in a search which uses those keywords.

Search engines are smart to simple keyword repetition ('golf balls, golf balls, golf balls' etc). Since they want to present relevant results, they filter out obvious tricks like that. Not only does this technique not necessarily work, copy with keywords more intelligently repeated gets better results anyway.

Keyword repetition works in a more sophisticated way, but it's easy to do.

You have several places on your Web page that you can place keywords:

• The page title
• The content of the page
• Within hyperlinks
• Within image alt (alternative) text and link (title) text
• Within meta tags

On average, the running order of the items above represents the level of importance given by search engines to those items. This is interesting, because people who use search engine tricks usually employ their efforts in the opposite direction!

Repeating keywords properly shouldn't be considered as a 'cheat'. You can repeat keywords without destroying the integrity of your page, just by some intelligent copywriting.

Let's take a look at a page from the hypothetical Web site of Simon Slickpen, the science fiction illustrator. This sample page contains text in all the key areas. The text that Simon's used isn't bad, but I'm quickly going to optimise it a little.

If you don't understand what some of these terms are (such as alt text, meta description and meta keywords) then please read the associated briefing on meta tags. This is a very simple example, and I'm only fine-tuning a couple of page elements. Let's take a look at what I've done.

• I've standardised on the term 'science fiction' rather than use science fiction, sci-fi and SF interchangeably. I reasoned that, in a search, people are likely to enter 'science fiction' more often than the other terms - so I decided this is the best main key phrase from the available options.
• Outside of the keywords, I've got the instance of the term science fiction up from two to eight, without destroying the integrity of the text, by adding it - in context - wherever it made sense.
• In the page title, I've used a hyphen rather than a comma to separate Simon's name from what he does. This separates the two elements far more clearly, so when people are scanning search engine results, they can read these two elements faster. (It also helps people when they are browsing to the site, because the text in the title bar of the browser is clearer, too.)
• The hyperlink has become meaningful from a search engine perspective, it 'knows' what the link relates to.
• I've used alt and title text to add in the science fiction keyphrase, making those more relevant from a search engine perspective.
• I've ensured that the words 'illustrator' and 'illustration' are used within the text, as I believe that people are likely to include either of these equally.

This collective work, though simple, will help to improve Simon's ranking when people search for 'science fiction illustrations' or 'science fiction illustrator'.

A well-tuned page will include perhaps dozens of keywords, but will do it in a way which is sensible and within the context of the page content. None of my suggested changes makes the page less useful to the visitor, or looks underhand.

The domain name

Before I look at the individual page elements in more detail, let's look at one additional element - the domain name. Clearly, if Simon can secure www.illustration.com (too late, it's already gone) then he's going to get some traffic automatically.

Search engine results will benefit too, as this is a relevant keyword that will be added to the repetition. But there's a law of diminishing returns - www.simonslickpen.com or www.slickpen.com would be better than www.slickpen-science-fiction-illustrations.com.

It's handy if you can get a keyword in, but don't sweat it if you can't. Domain names are as important for getting people back as they are for getting them there in the first place, so, if it can't be 'discoverable', (like www.illustration.com) then make it memorable - www.slickpen.com would be fine - www.slickpen-illustrations.com gets the keyword in, so it will fare a little better with search engines, but at what price? It erodes the Slickpen brand a little and is a lot less convenient to type and remember than the simple www.slickpen.com. (Never put the needs of search engines before your visitors - don't make life hard for visitors by giving them a massive URL to type!)

The page title - starting at the top

The Web page title is not only important to Web site visitors - it's important for search engines. The page title comes from the HTML TITLE tag - which is covered in more detail in the associated briefing - meta tags.

To save you the effort of following the above link right now, here's the key points.

The TITLE tag is useful in several ways. From the visitor's perspective - it should tell them which site and page they are on. Therefore, the TITLE tag should contain the name of the site (or person, or organisation) followed by the name of the page, or vice versa. For example: 'The Shoe Shop - the best value shoes, in vibrant colours'. As I said, it should also tell them which page they are on, so as you move around the site, you change the title of the page to reflect each page, in this way:

• The Shoe Shop - about the Shoe Shop
• The Shoe Shop - contact the Shoe Shop
• The Shoe Shop - legal notices
• The Shoe Shop - product catalogue

My preference is for the name of the company to be first. This is because:

• When on your site, and flicking from page to page, your company name won't vary in position on the title bar, so it's easier for people to see which page they are on. You can do it the other way around, but this means the company name moves in position left to right, so it's less clear to people that they are on the same site.
• It's more logical: people typically orientate themselves from larger location to smaller, as in 'country > county > town > street', or 'store > department > product'.
• It allows you to put in a third level of orientation, such as: 'The Shoe Shop - product catalogue - men's shoes' more easily, without pushing your brand out of the way.

But, from a search engine perspective, there's another benefit. When multiple pages are returned from your site during a search engine search, it's easier for the person to see all the pages which belong to your site. Search engines don't capture or display all of a long page title, so you're assured that your company name is always there, and your pages are typically grouped together in the search results.

Because of this, and because the amount displayed is ultimately dependent on the size of the visitors' monitors (the two most used monitor resolutions are 800x600 and 1024x768 - both considered pedestrian by more technical users, though 1024x1268 is becoming more mainstream) it's vital to be economical with your words. Keep your company name and description short and don't waste words.

Meta tags - keywords and description

These days meta tags (tags with keywords and descriptions which are hidden within your Web pages) are only moderately indexed by some search engines. It's still worth using them, but don't get hung up about them. Lots of people fixate on these tags and think that they are vital, and there is some magic use of them which will rocket them to the top of the search engine rankings. That's nonsense.

Many professional Web designers now consider that the meta keywords tag is dead and don't bother with it for most pages. This is because almost all search engines now ignore this tag when indexing a page.

The meta description tag is more useful. Some search engines do look at this tag, but only in the context of your page content (comparing one with the other).

You can spend a lot of time working on your meta tags with little result. By far more useful an activity is to concentrate on the page title, content of your page, and, to some degree, the alt and title text explained later in this briefing.

Meta tags are covered in detail in the associated briefing: meta tags.

Page content

Vastly underestimated in its usefulness when optimising pages for search engines, the page content is actually what most search engines now look at when indexing a page. The reason for this is simple: people are less likely to employ cheats within the page text than anywhere else, since doing so would render the page a lot less useful to human visitors.

Intelligent copywriting will enable you to build up a good pattern of repetitive keywords, but don't do this in a way which compromises communication. For example, there's no need to include sentences such as: "Golf balls from the Golf Shop are good golf balls, perhaps the best golf balls in the world." You can easily find ways to make your keyword repetition less obvious. Don't make your page look untrustworthy or useless to read.

One thing most certainly worth doing is making sure that you have a good description of your site on the home page, as near to the top of the page as you can manage - within the site design, not as hidden tags. This part of the site and page is the one most likely to be indexed by search engines. My experimentation has shown that less 'relevant' information will be indexed if it is higher up the page. (Statements which say 'welcome to our Web site' are not only irrelevant to the visitor, they are useless when indexed.) Keep 'marketing speak' out of this paragraph, keep it short and ensure that it fully describes your site - and includes some of your target keywords. It's also a good idea that this statement mirrors your meta description tag to re-enforce the keywords for search engines.

Alt text

Alt text is the 'alternative text' which is displayed when a visitor has graphics turned off. It is good practice to use alt text for all images, except those design elements (for example a horizontal rule) which don't need a title. When writing your alt text, it is a simple matter to ensure that you weave in some target keywords, as in my Simon Slickpen example above.

Some, not all, search engines use alt text in the context of the page. For those search engines, adding in some target keywords will improve the ranking of the page. (Remember that simply repeating the same words over and over will not help, as search engines can spot this obvious trick.) There's no point in introducing new keywords within alt text, as keywords are only considered in the context of the page - so hiding non-relevant words in alt text doesn't work.

Remember that a key use of alt text is to provide information to non-sighted visitors about images. For these visitors, good alt text is an essential part of a Web page, after all, they can't see the images. This text information is all they have. For this reason, I write alt text primarily for non-sighted visitors - and I encourage you to do the same. In doing so, you will automatically be making the alt text more search engine-friendly, anyway.

Title text

Title text is the hyperlink equivalent of alt text. You can see its use on some sites when you hover over a text hyperlink, giving you a 'tooltip' text box. This is an Internet Explorer tag, so not necessarily supported by other browsers. Again, you can expand on the actual link text to include a relevant target keyword, but don't abuse the tag by simply repeating keywords - search engines detect and ignore this. The few search engines which support the title tag only read it in the content of the page, so it's pointless introducing new keywords here.

Link popularity

Off the page itself, there is one activity you can undertake to improve your site and page rankings. When a search engine indexes your site, it looks at how many inbound links it already has stored to that page/site. The more inbound links, the higher the ranking - because it indicates that your site/page is of greater popularity than unlinked pages.

Getting links on other sites takes time and may cause you to create content which is designed to be linked to, with the specific intent of boosting your rankings. For example, other sites might find little reason to link to your product pages, but if you include articles or white papers on specific (and little published) topics, then professional organisations (for example) might be persuaded to link to them.

Many people have abused this concept by setting up false Web pages, on different URLs, with links to their site - specifically to trick search engines into ranking their pages higher. Doing this has to be more effort than a strategy that is above board! It's also more likely to be detected as fraud, resulting in a search engine 'ranking' a page lower down in its search results - or excluding it entirely.

Page changes

Search engines have limited (though massive) storage space. Every so often they 'junk' old sites. They also give search preference (generally) to newer sites. Both of these things are reasonably logical actions. To keep your site looking relevant to search engines, all you need to do is to make changes to the text every few weeks or months. Remember that changes to 'stop words' (covered in the associated briefing, things that search engines don't like) are all but invisible to search engines, so changing your target keyword content is more important.

Conclusion

Within each HTML page, there is enough scope to tune your page to optimise it for search engines. This doesn't guarantee success, of course (no search engine trick can either, whatever you're told). But it will help enormously - I've tuned pages using these methods, and quickly improved their search engine results dramatically. Forget the tricks - just do it right!

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