The five quintessential things you can do to optimize your site for the web

A free article on SEO

By: Sandy Lee

If you want your business website to be successful in today's market and you want to hit those all-important top ranking spots in the search engine tables, then you are going to need to do a little 'search engine optimisation'. This is the process of making your website more user-friendly and more accessible to search engines.

Search engines frequently scan the net for information and select the websites with the most relevant information to place at the tops of their lists. This is an automated process governed by specific rules. In order to help with this process there are five important things that you can try.

Make sure that your site has a straightforward and logical linking structure. This means that you need to make sure pages are linked directly to one another and aren't linked through a whole host of other pages. Having to travel through 5 or 6 pages to find the one you need is frustrating for a user. A search engine scanning your site will also simply give up and give your site a lower ranking. A lower ranking can be disastrous for a business. A website that appears on the second or third page of a search engine's results has far fewer visits than one listed on the first page - it's a fact.

A search engine optimisation trick, directly connected to the logical linking structure, is to provide a site map. This should show a list of all of the pages contained on the site at a glance. Users find these site maps invaluable, but more importantly search engines look for them. Having a clear and well laid out site map can help you get a much sought after top ranking. A site map will help you manage your site better in the future, and newer employees who may be required to maintain the site will be able to immediately understand the site, rather than it all being in the head of 'one man'.

Think carefully about the keywords that you use on your site. Search engine robots look for specific keywords, the frequency of those words and also the overuse of them, to help determine the site's ranking. Sometimes it is better to use less popular keywords in order to secure a specific search criterion. The key factor is the relevance of the keywords to your business.

Also think carefully about the titles of your pages. These are the words that appear in the browser window and are very important. For maximum search engine optimisation, select titles that are logical and that you think customers are likely to search for. The page titles are what really count from a customer's point of view. The titles hook their attention and draw them into the surrounding text, maximising the chance that they will spend more time exploring your site.

Finally, try to avoid duplicate content on your site. Search engine robots recognise repeated content and this will have an adverse affect on your ranking. From a customer's point of view, they will not want to trawl through page after page of the same information. Once a customer starts skipping repeated pages they will start skipping other pages as well. In the worst case, a customer may simply give up on the site altogether and visit a competitor's pages.

Search engine optimisation is a vital strategy for improving your site's ranking in search results. A higher position in a search engine list means more visits to your site and more custom. If you are in any doubt you can always contact a professional company for help.