3Rings Web Services
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Being found
Here is some interesting information from the Wikipedia.....
In December 2009 there were 192 million domain names
That's a lot of competition when it comes to being found on the internet!
What is SEO?
SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimising a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" is used to describe site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimised for search engine exposure.
Techniques
SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimise the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO. White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites will eventually be banned once the search engines discover what they are doing.
3Rings will not undertake any black hat SEO tasks for clients - if you are looking for someone to do this for you, you are at the wrong place.
The class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, uses
methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that
degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of
search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these
techniques in order to remove them from their indices.
3Rings supports the white hat method of SEO!
An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered white hat if it
conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As
the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules or
commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is
not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the
content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same
content a user will see.
White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for
users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily
accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to game the algorithm.
History
Real-time-search was introduced in late 2009 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimising a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results. This new approach to search also places importance on current, fresh and unique content.
Increasing Exposure
A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results. Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide more links to most important pages may improve its visibility. Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrase, so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries will tend to increase traffic. Adding relevant keywords to a web page's meta data, including the title tag and meta description, will tend to improve the relevancy of a site's search listings, thus increasing traffic too.
The easiest way we know to achieve these aims is to install a simple CMS system so that with a few clicks and a few words you can easily keep your website fresh.
Google Says...
Quality guidelines - basic principles
- Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
- Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
- Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
- Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate ourTerms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
Quality guidelines - specific guidelines
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don't send automated queries to Google.
- Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
- Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
- Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
- If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.
If you determine that your site doesn't meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and then submit your site for reconsideration.
updated 6/4/2010
Other Google Guides and Tools
Keyword Tool
Note - there is a newer version of this one (assuming the above link works today) - but i prefer this older legacy version.
Accessibility
As well as google being able to read and scan your site it needs to be accessible to as many human visitors as possible - WAVE is a great tool for checking the accessibility of your site by screen readers and those with no mouse
Websafe fonts
http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html
Also see the Access Keys page for more information on accessibility and catering for different reading methods...