Search engine optimisation (SEO)

The aim of a search engine is to present its users with what they are looking for when they type in a search term.

How search engines work

To do this they create their own view on what each web page on the www is about and list that page accordingly. Some search engines do this by reading each page of the web automatically (crawling) and scoring them according to their own top secret rules. Others review sites manually to create their listing, or directory. The big players are now doing both, Google the search engine has introduced Google directory, and Yahoo, traditionally a directory, now leads with its search option.

Page rank

Each search engine has a set of rules about how a page is ranked. These rules are known as algorithms. For obvious reasons the search engines do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages, but it is generally agreed that the most important elements that influence a page's rankings include:

• Keywords in the title tag
• Keywords in links pointing to the page
• Keywords appearing in visible text
• Link popularity (PageRank for Google) of the page
• Alt and meta tags
• And much more ...

What is optimisation

The aim of search engine optimisation is to build a website so that it is categorised by the search engines as you would like it to be categorised if you could write your own entry. You could say that you are reverse engineering your entry. This involves a degree of understanding on how the engines work (especially the current algorithms, as they change regularly) and expertise from strategy through to implementation.

Content is key

There is no short cut to SEO. It is all about providing the content that your users are looking for.

There are, of course, things that you can do to help your rankings, but without the content you will always have a huge uphill battle. 

Properly optimised content based around your keywords, which are in turn based around your offering, will not only be good for your search engine ranking, it will also be good for you visitors. The web is all about providing people with the content that they are looking for. If you stick to this aim, your site will always perform well on the search engines.

Black hat

As with most things, you can cheat with search engines optimisation, but if you get caught you can get into trouble (BMW was removed from Google for a day last year!). Trying to cheat the search engines is know as "black hat" optimisation. It is high risk and short term. We do not do it.

White hat

We recommend playing by the rules (imaginatively known as "white hat"). This has 2 major benefits:

1. it will build a better long term campaign, as your aims are aligned to the search engines, namely providing users with content that they want to read.
2. your visitors are more likely to generate value for you, as they will find what they were looking for and so will engage with your site.