Search Engine Optimisation ( SEO )

Search Engine Optimisation ( SEO ) for Websites in Glasgow, Scotland, and UK

There is much much more to getting found through search engines than first meets the eye. Below we will give you some of the knowledge required but the thing about search engine optimisation is that it is an ever changing area of web development and your website will have to be reviewed on a regular basis to take that ever changing nature of search engines into account.

So were do you begin ?

Meta Tags - eh ????? What are they ?

OK - web designers and developers forget you are "normal" people and start talking about things like "meta tags" as if it is part of your everyday language. But what are they are how important are they ?

Simply put - they are areas of information hidden ( sort of ) from website visitors, but containing information that search engines may look at and in doing so this will help you get found via search engines.

There are many different types of meta tags and I won't bore you with the various ones, but you should focus primarily on the <TITLE> tag, and then the <DESCRIPTION> tag , and the <KEYWORD> tag. We can advice in much more detail about this if you are the type of person who needs to know more.

Basically though these are only part of Search Engine Optimisation, and if you wish to get found via search engines you must do much more.

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Web page file names and their importance ?

This is something often overlooked by designers and developers but the actual file name for your website should perhaps contain the words that are relevant to that page.
e.g. look in the address bar and see how this page is named "search-engine-optimisation-seo.html"

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The importance of image file names and Alt text

Images on a page can be very productive when it comes to assisting your web page get found via search engines. First of all the images should be named again to contain the keywords that are relevant to that particular page. e.g. the image above is called "search-engine-optimisation.gif" - this is simple enough to do and contains the keywords most pertinent to this search optimisation page of this website. Similarly you will see that the "alt" text (alt is short for alternative) is "Improve your web traffic with S.E.O. - an image of search button" again trying to use similar words that may be used by someone doing a search through a search engine.

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The importance of the amount of text on your pages

This is an area that sometimes you may get conflicting information on. The amount of words on a page. First of all lets look at what is important. We are assuming you are reading this page because you want to get found through search engines, therefore the advice you sometimes receive that you shouldn't put too much text on a page because people won't read it does not apply. So assuming you want to be found how many words should you use? Generally speaking you should have somewhere between 250 - 400 words as a minimum. If you have less than this then some search engines regard your website as being low in content and as such you can be downgraded.

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The importance of keyword density

Not only should you have a certain number of words on a page but you should also have a certain percentage of those words as the keywords that you think someone will use in order to find your products or services. If you use the same word too often it could prove to be a negative as could it be if you do not use it enough.

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Need to know more ?

Call us on 0141 332 7568 or alternatively contact us through our online contact form

Web Tips: What's the competition doing & what should you do?

You can find out what meta tags your competitors are using very simply. If you are using Internet Explorer (or Firefox) then select from the "view" drop down menu and select "source" - this will display the source code that makes up the webpage. Usually located at the top of the page you will see the meta tag information. Having said this - that does not mean your competitors are using the right meta tags. A better idea would be to do a search using a search term that you think people would use to find you. Then look at the websites that come top of the web search and view their source code. This may be better from the point of view of establishing what works. Remember you cannot just copy someone else's meta tag information - this is only meant to act as a guide to you and give you ideas.

What about the keyword density being used by websites? Similarly do a search and select on the top websites that are found. Using Firefox select the "edit" drop down menu, select the "find on this page" option. Most likely at the bottom of the browser there will appear a box - type your keyword into this box and then select the option "Highlight all" - this will display all instances of that particular word or words on your page. Then simply copy paste all the words from the webpage into word and doing a word count this will give you an idea about the amount of times a word appears relative to the number of words on the page and therefore give you an idea about the keyword density for that page. Alternatively you could always buy a piece of software that does all this for you.

So here are the simple steps to follow:

Step 1
You need to determine what people would search for to find your services, and then make a list of these words in the various combinations that people might use. e.g. if you were a web designer some of the keywords would be as follows

web design
website design
web site design
web designer
web designers
website designers
website designer

Note the variations on the same theme.

Step 2
Once you have a full list you should then look to make sure you incorporate as many as possible into your text on the pages of your website. Another thing with search engine optimisation is that you should have about 300-400 words minimum on each page and that the main keywords should be incorporated as about 4% or 5% of the total number of words. In other words - if "website" was a keyword and you had a total of 100 words on the page, then the word "website" should appear about 4 or 5 times within that 100 words.

Step 3
From your list of keywords chose the most approriate for each page and include them in a sentence related to the content of the page. This becomes your title for that page - see the Kiswebs example below for the Kiswebs homepage

<title>Website Design - Kiswebs are Web Site Designers and Developers in Glasgow, Scotland and UK</title>

Please note that some search engines (like Google) display only 60 characters from the title tag.

Step 4
Create short description for each page - this has to be a proper sentence about 15 - 25 words long - see the Kiswebs example below for the Kiswebs homepage.

Step 5
Create a list of keywords for each page that are relevant to each page - please note - you should only include words in your keyword list that ALSO appear on the actual content of the page. - see the Kiswebs example below for the Kiswebs homepage

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