Easy and effective SEO for your business website

Help the search engine

A high page ranking is essential: everyone wants to appear on page 1 or 2 on Google, but there are problems. With about 4 billion websites - no one knows exactly how many - and 80,000 new ones appearing each day, the problem is immense. High page rankings are achieved by close collaboration between client and web designer. First let's look at how search engines work. With the exception of The Open Directory Project, search engines use automated programs called 'spiders' (also known as 'robots' or 'crawlers') to whizz round the internet. When one happens across your website, it examines it and then follows the links to other pages it can reach within the site. The spider makes return visits, maybe every month to pick up any alterations. Everything it finds is indexed and eventually made public for searching. As if this wasn't clever enough, the really amazing stuff comes when the engine ranks the relevance of the pages in the index with the search word(s) or phrases that are tapped in.

Precisely how Google and others do this is more closely guarded than the alleged Coca-Cola recipe, but the algorithm (n. A formula or clear set of steps for solving a particular problem) depends on the location and frequency of your defined keywords, among many other things. Now you have an inkling of how search engines work, I hope it will make more sense when you come to plan how your website is designed. 'Search engine optimisation' (SEO) keeps many clever people fully employed.

Search engines love text-rich pages, the more the merrier. Every page should have at least 200 words. Spiders cannot search graphics or (most) flash and JavaScript. Frame-designed pages also pose difficulties (many early websites used frames). Higher ranking will be achieved if the search keywords appear near the top of a page, maybe as the headline or in the first few paragraphs of body text. It's assumed that any page relevant to the topic will start with those words right at the beginning.

It also helps if keywords are mentioned more frequently, without 'spamming'. This is defined as continuous repetition or by putting text the same colour as the background (usually white) so though they're invisible to us, the spider can pick them up. Putting keywords in bold implies they are more important or relevant. Italics also achieves the same thing, though this is less easy to read onscreen. Avoid flash and heavy graphics: Google can't index jpegs or gifs. Use main keywords in your title tag. Use H1 and H2 headline text. Use the same keywords as page names. The spider forms a view as to how relevant the search engine term is compared with the frequency and prominence of each page held in its index to achieve a good match.

Use plenty of links within the site and especially to the key pages. Google ranks inbound links highly on the basis that if a site has lots of such links, then it must be an important site. Don't build a site that requires visitors to delve more than two levels to reach the page they want. Flat sites are best. Ensure that all graphics have ALT (alternate text) tags. This is important so that visually impaired people can still use your site and search engines take ALT tags into account. Hidden meta tags are not so important but it takes little time to complete at least that for the home page. Make sure the description is completed as this shows up in search results. A good site map on the home page is believed to improve ranking (more links). Keep updating. Some believe that Google downgrades static sites. A relevant domain (keywords again) also helps.

Test the site

As with all new ventures, it is sensible to test the site before going live. Sites that crash are all too common and do nothing for client credibility. Sites crash because they can't cope with the load, but predicting the likely traffic is problematical. Business-to-business trading is easier, for you no doubt know where most trade is likely to come from. The type and size of order - low-value spare parts or just enquiries for capital items - will be easier to gauge.

Conversion sales from hit rates will be significantly less than 1 per cent. With so many unknown variables, save your big marketing promotion till you are entirely happy that your site can cope. Any bespoke software must be capable of quick expansion. Test that the ordering, stock control, distribution and response e-mail seamlessly integrate with little if any re-keying by a human required. That's when mistakes happen.

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