Search Engine Optimisation Tips

When creating a website, for personal use or for a client, one of your main responsibilities is to ensure that the website, once it is out of the beta stage and is 'live' on the internet, is well positioned in a search results list generated by search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

All search engines rank websites based on their own algorithms. No-one knows how these algorithms derive a score for a particular site, but key-phrase density, prominence and link popularity play a vital role in the relevancy scoring for each website.

Ideally, you would like to achieve at least a top 30 ranking within the search results because research has shown that very seldom do internet surfers look much past the first 3 pages of results provided by the search engine.

Let's take a look at 4 tips that will help you achieve a well optimised webpage:

Establish who your target market is

The priority of any business, whether they have an internet presence or not, is to know who their target market is. This information plays a pivotal role in the design of the website because knowing who the site is directed at will not only help with the optimisation, but with the tone and style of the website too. Once you have established who you are targeting the next tip is choosing the right key-phrases.

Choose the right key-phrases

Key-phrases as opposed to keywords, because most searches are done for phrases, and not individual words. It is imperative of course that you choose the right key-phrases as choosing the wrong ones will leave your efforts unrewarded. Look at the phrases your competitors are using on their sites. Google and Yahoo both have a tool that allows you to find keywords and key-phrases that are popularly used by internet surfers.

Write website content and optimise the pages

Once you have established your target market and the key-phrases for your website you can write the content that will make up the bulk of the written information on your site. Here you will include the identified key-phrases wherever possible, but only if appropriate. In other words: don't over do it. Two or three times per key-phrase per every 400 - 500 words is a good guideline, with two or three unique key-phrases used. The golden rule however is to ensure that the content is readable and makes sense - if only one key-phrase is appropriate then only include one.

Create a gripping title tag

The title tag is the phrase which is displayed on the search engine results page and is the phrase which will be read by potential visitors to your website. You want it to be compelling because if it does not catch the reader's attention they may not decide to visit your site. To create a gripping title tag you need to do some comparative searching and see what is working for the websites who rank in the top 5 or 10 using key-phrases similar to your own.

In summary: the better you know who your customer is, the better your end product will be. And to create the best possible end product, begin with a Dreamweaver training course in the UK.