Website optimisation basics

No one can guarantee that your website can be listed on the first page on any of the big search engines. With a constant stream of new websites being produced daily it would be a near impossible task.

Many factors can influence a position on a search engine for example; the more competition in a certain field the more companies will be fighting for those important first page positions. As you can imagine there are more clothing retailers on the web than there are garage door companies, so in order to rank higher as a clothing retailer it is a lot more difficult.

Making sure your website has been built with search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind, is one of the most important elements…

Basic Tweaks

Some other things that can help your search engine ranking are:

• Making sure you have a site map on every page, this helps search engines navigate your site.
• Having fresh up to date information on your website allows search engines to refresh your listing. Including a blog and publishing articles and linking is also a good way of doing this.
• Try and stick to a maximum of ten images per page, and also make sure all images have HTML Alt and Title tags when your images are linked.
• Check that the images aren’t too large as this could affect the speed at which your web pages load, a slow loading site may change how Google ranks you.
• An older site has had chance to build good internal and external links, and should have created a name for itself. However you can build a few links quickly and easily by linking to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Text Tricks

Other slightly more technical ways to help your website rank higher on search engines are;

• Use a breadcrumb trail to make sure your site has a good internal link structure.
• Make sure your key word(s) or phrase is used in the page titles, meta description, are also in the main text on your site, but DO NOT ever over use! Overuse of any key words or phrases will have a negative impact on your rank.

SEO is a large topic with many different views on what works and does not work, this is only a guide on the basics, we hope you have found this usefull.