How Do I Get My Website To The Top Of The Search Engines?
This is a question we
get very often, and the answer is not so simple.
Please read this article, and also
Search
Engine Submissions.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is in reality Webpage Optimisation for Search Engines.
As the designer of a website, you should be very aware of what will be discussed in this tutorial.
When it comes to having a great ranking in the search engines, it doesn't matter how good your website looks. What does matter is your content. What you SAY in your website.
Meta Tags
Early search engines in the
mid-90s ranked sites solely on the meta tags. This is NOT the case anymore. The
Top 5 search engines use complex algorithms to determine a websites rank in
comparison to a similar website.
Meta tags are html code placed between the <head> tags.
Our meta tags are:
<meta name="description" content="Value Hosting Australia provides affordable hosting solutions for small websites through to large corporations. Web hosting. Low prices. Great value.">
<meta name="keywords" content="web site hosting, australia web, cheap web hosting, low cost, low, cheap, budget, hosting, australia, australia, web hosting australia, web design australia, australia web site design, hosting, web hosting, web design, internet development, internet resources, promotion, australia internet developers, nsw, web development, web hosting melbourne,web hosting sydney web hosting, hosting, host, web host, webhosting, webhosting, australia hosting, domain, register domain, web design, australia webhosting, webhosting australia, cheap hosting, cheap webhosting, cheap web hosting, cheap hosting australia, australia cheap hosting, virtual web hosting">
The "description" and "keywords" tags are the most important.
Notice that in our "description" we have used the terms 'hosting', 'website', 'australia', 'web hosting'. We have used the most important keywords that people will search for in any search engine, and put them into a sentence.
In our "Keywords", we have used lots of combinations of 'hosting', 'website' and 'australia'. It's important NOT to repeat any particular keyword more than 3 times. Don't just simply repeat your entire block of keywords over and over again.
Another important tag is
the <title> tag. For example, if you have a website for your pet store,
put some keywords in your title, such as:
<title>Pet Store - Dogs, Cats, Rabbits and Fish</title>
Content
The MOST important part of SEO is your webpage content. Once you have determined your most valuable keywords (eg, ours is 'hosting', 'web hosting' etc), use them wherever you can.
Use the keywords when naming your .html files! Such as dogs.html or cats.html
Something
that works well is to also have your keywords in a hyperlink. For example:
Web Hosting Packages
This link has the keywords "web hosting"
and links to a folder called "web-hosting"
Name ALL your images! You can add 'alternate text' to your images. Use your keywords in the images too.
 |
Hold your mouse
over the image to see the text, or right-click and select Properties.
The html code for this is: <img src="nosetup.gif" alt="Free Setup on all web hosting plans."> |
DON'T repeat your keywords on your website in the same color as the background so that its 'invisible'. A lot of search engines will hate you for it, and ignore your submission.
From experience, Google brings in most of our hits. You should aim to be within the first 2 pages of Google for your nominated search keywords.
Learn to submit your optimised website to the search engines here.
