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Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation is one of the most important and oft-neglected areas of website design and development. A beautiful website packed full of first-class information is of little use unless people can find it! Ideally, you should have your website built with search engines in mind to begin with.

If you already know something about search engine optimisation then you may ask why my title and meta tags are not all well-crafted for optimal effect, or why I am not at No. 1 in Google! This is because I am not using search engines to promote my own site at present. I am appealing to a local market via direct contact and via networking, and therefore global search engines are irrelevant. I often advise potential clients that search engine optimisation may not necessarily be the most cost-effective form of marketing. I am open and honest in my approach.

Moreover, as I discuss below, it is almost impossible for a relatively young and unimportant site (that is, unimportant in nationwide or global terms) to acheive high rankings in Google via legitimate means for highly competitive keyword phrases. There are many ways of publicising a website other than via search engines; however, it is an important ingredient in a marketing strategy for many businesses, and if you are one of those, then read on ...

It takes a lot more to achieve good search engine positioning than just adding a few keywords to the meta tags, and then using some automated submission software, as is often thought. The keywords need to be worked into the pages in a systematic way and submissions need to be done manually to be really effective.

If the keywords are used excessively, one's site may not get listed at all, if they are used insufficiently then one is likely to appear at No. 300! Many major search engines now block the use of automated submissions software due to excessive use by search engine spammers.

Moreover, it is no use being at No. 1 in Google if the displayed result does not attract the user to click on the link, or if the resultant page that the user lands on is badly written and does not attract them to buy your products or services.

For any highly competitive keyword phrase, and, in particular for any relatively new site, it is almost impossible to get highly positionned in search engines, especially Google, without tricks being resorted to. I do not deploy tricks. If your search engine optimisation company uses any such tricks, your site could be reported for abuse to the search engines by a competitor, and the search engines may drop your site from their indices for an unspecified period of time. Because it is so hard to get a new site and/or domain well-positionned in Google, this can have serious consequences.

As to whether or not the tricks used are "ethical" or "unethical", I would say that I understand why search engine optimisation companies resort to them - simply because it can be so difficult in such a highly competitive arena to get anywhere in search engines. There are many crooks in the search engine optimisation business, but there are many perfectly legitimate companies who have been pushed into using such dubious techniques simply in order to survive. I have my own methods for working with search engines which may not guarantee such high positions, but which will not backfire. I can discuss these with you.

Here are some of the most common tricks:

• Meaningless pages loaded with excessive repetitions of a keyword.
• So called "guaranteed No.1 positioning" … for obscure, long keyword phrases which no-one is ever likely to enter in a search engine, or for quoted keyword phrases. The latter is a very cunning trick. A seo company may offer to get you to number one for "organic Scottish herbs" - seems innoncent enough until you realise that they mean that phrase literally, i.e. with the quotes included. Quoted keyword phrases are used when looking for an exact match, but most users rarely use exact-match searches.
• Hiding keywords within the HTML code (e.g. by use of the <!--comments--> tags or via "invisible" text where the text is set to be the same colour as the background.)
• Using "link farms" (web pages consisting of meaningless lists of links) to boost search engine rankings. Many search engines, especially Google, place heavy emphasis on link popularity, and link farms were set up to exploit this. Google is now getting wise to this trick. As of February 2005 Google has taken action to reduce the impact of reciprocal linking.
• "Shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects.
• "IP cloaking" which delivers a different page to a search engine from the one users actually see.
• Pages which belong to the seo company and only exist for as long as you keep paying the seo company. Such pages blur the distinction between optimisation on the one hand, and advertising on the other hand where you pay for an advert to appear for a specified time. This is fair enough if the terms and conditions are made clear, but this is not always publicised, and I have seen a case where one such page was used to direct search engine users to another website after the client had (presumably) stopped paying!
• The seo company may deploy sponsored listings - this again is really a form of advertising and has the disadvantage that your pages may only appear for the duration of the subscription. Again, it is a matter of transparency. Nothing is wrong with this method if it is clearly indicated that this is really a form of advertising and has a limited time duration.
• Spurious statistics. SEO companies offer you more "hits" on your site. However, it is not "hits" you are interested in but page views and unique visitors. "Hits" are simply the number of requests that are made to the web server when a page is called by the user's browser. Every image (for example) on the web page requires a separate request. Therefore a page with lots of images will generate a lot of "hits" from a single visit by a single user. Unfortunately the term "hits" is used loosely as most users think that it refers to the number of page views.

I also discuss some of these on the search engine optimisation page which I wrote for the Netmedia site.

(Meaningful, sustainable, legitimate) No. 1 rankings cannot be guaranteed - search engine optimisation is NOT an exact science - no-one knows exactly what the search engine algorithms are, and the algorithms are changing all the time - it is educated guesswork based on experience. There are companies who offer money-back guarantees - I can only surmise that they must charge a small fortune, and be giving out a lot of refunds, or using some tricks!

Because I regard search engine optimisation as a long term strategy, I also look to the future in terms of how search engines will (probably) work. For example, search engines are becoming increasingly sensitive to thematic content and words which have specific relationships. I apply such principles in my methodology as a form of "future-proofing". I am more interested in what will work tomorrow than what worked yesterday - I only use the best of yesterday's techniques.

There are some very fine search engine optimisation companies who do use legitimate techniques. However, these are often very expensive (legitimate companies may well charge you over a £1000 up front, and monthly maintenance payments of over £200). What I do is an agreed number of hours of work per week optimising your site and invoice you on a regular basis for work done to date - I do not tie you into a contract and you can at any time cease using me. I discuss with you what you want me to do and how you want me to do it. I do not offer preset one-size-fits-all packages. I offer flexibility, openness, transparency and honesty. I would strongly recommend that you do NOT use a company who simply say "just hand over your site to us and let us get on with it". Always use companies and individuals who explain to you exactly how they are going to go about the process, and who leave YOU in control of your own site. Be particularly wary of any company who wants to move your site to another server.

In the next few pages I will give you a basic rundown of how search engine optimisation works. There is also an excellent article on common mistakes at axandra.com. This explains why sites often fail to obtain good rankings (or any rankings at all!) with certain search engines. It is a must-read. Probably the most authoritative website on search engine optimisation and related matters is Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch. However, to get a basic, simple understanding of this complex subject, read on ...

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