Search Engine Optimisation - Hints & Tips

Top 5 reasons for poor rankings or failure to be listed in a search engine or directory:

1. The site uses frames
If you didn't design the site yourself or don't know if it uses frames, you can go into 'View HTML Source' while looking at your web site in your browser - and if you see the word 'FRAMESET' in the code, your site uses frames.

This format is renowned for causing problems with the automated search engines - some cannot read framed pages at all, or follow links within them (so your other pages do not get indexed).
Although the main search engines have recently improved support for frames (Lycos is a notable exception), so that page content can be seen and links followed, the use of frames can still have an adverse effect on search engine rankings.

This is because framed pages are still indexed independently of each other, which can result in, for example, visitors arriving at pages without navigation frames or branding, leaving them unable to work out where they are or how to explore the site. Usability issues like this will affect both click-through and link popularity, thereby directly affecting search engine rankings.

Don't panic though - there are work-arounds which don't involve re-designing the entire site!

For example:
i) Create a new entry page which doesn't use frames, but which is optimised with keywords, titles, headings and page copy to be search-engine friendly.
ii) Optimise the existing code using the 'NOFRAMES' tag, which all search engines can read and support.
iii) Submit each of your pages separately and include links on every page to return to the main frameset, or add Javascript to the code of each page which will restore the frameset automatically.

2. The pages are dynamically generated
Look at the Address/URL box at the top of your browser: if you can see a '?' or similar character in your web page address your web pages are probably generated dynamically from information held in a database.

Most automated search engines at the moment cannot read these pages, although it is likely that in the near future this will change as their technology becomes more sophisticated. In the meantime, this is a lot of information about your company or products which isn't being indexed, and cannot be found by your visitors on a search engine!

There are technical work-arounds which enable pages to be produced as static rather than dynamic pages, but this can often add unnecessarily to the complexity of the design and update process. A better solution might be to create 'landing' pages, which are static search-engine-friendly pages linked to and from your main site, and optimised as entry points from the search engines for specific keywords/phrases.

3. Poor keyword focus.
When you view the HTML source for your web page, you may see a section of code at the top marked 'META'…keywords, description etc. These tags tell a search engine what your page is about, and what the most important search words and phrases on the page are. If you don't see these tags at all, your site has not been optimised for the search engines. If you see a long and varied list of keywords, some of which do not relate to each other, others which do not appear in the page copy itself, and more which are simply repetitions, it is likely that your page is poorly optimised for keywords.

Keywords and phrases are an important factor in how search engines (and directories) rank web site results, because they indicate a site's relevance to a particular search term. Search engines look at the position, frequency and context of keywords, on the page itself as well as in the META tags, to gauge relevance - and the more competing keywords there are on your page, the less relevant it is likely to be.

Note too that search engines look for the closest match to a search term when ranking, and that people nowadays tend to type in phrases rather than single words to find what they are looking for - therefore the secret to success will be in identifying what search terms your customers are actually using, and then optimising your web pages for these. (See the resources section on this site for tools to help you do this.)

4. Flash, Java and Javascript
Web site designers LOVE Flash! (It gives us a chance to show off our creative skills…) However, unless there's a strong argument for benefit to the user, it's probably best to steer clear of it as a format for your whole site if you want it to be search-engine friendly, because at the moment automated search engines can't read it - and unless you also create a non-Flash alternative, directories won't include you either.

That's not to say that a site can't combine Flash and non-Flash content - just make sure that the search engines can see plenty of non-Flash, fully optimised content too (and YES, that absolutely applies to the index page - if your site opens with a gorgeous Flash intro but nothing else on the page, the search engines will ignore it altogether, and directory editors will probably leave before the animation's finished).

Don't be tempted to use cloaking software, redirection scripts or META commands to get around the problem either - these techniques are known to be used by spammers and could result in your site being banned from the index.

You also need to ensure that all your pages can be reached from the page you submit to the engines, to maximise your chances of achieving good listings - this means making sure that your links can be followed.

Use of Java and Javascript can sometimes render links unreadable to engines, so if you're not sure, play safe and include text links at the foot of every page.
Alternatively, create a site map or list of contents page with plain vanilla html links to every page on your site, and make sure all your pages also contain a vanilla link to this page.

5. Poor quality, irrelevant or unoriginal content
Content is still king on the web, and no matter how well optimised for keywords your pages are, if they don't have anything interesting to say it's unlikely they will ever do well in the search engines.

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