SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the ranking of a website in the results of a search engine. The purpose of SEO is to increase visitors to your website. The higher your website ranks in search results, the more chance you will have of people firstly locating your site, and secondly actually choosing your site to view.
The benefits of this are that you are reaching customers who are already actively looking for your product or service. So rather than pushing towards a 'cold' audience, your prospective customers have found you all by themselves, exactly when they needed you.
It is common practice for internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, therefore ranking high in a search engine is essential to direct more traffic toward your site.
HELPFUL TIPS - PREPARING FOR YOUR WEBSITE PROJECT
Content
Content that is well structured, grammatically and factually correct is a great aid to search engine optimisation. Be specific about what you offer, and unique. It is vital that the content and its message is clear, and has meaning for the viewer.
Good, useful and interesting content will bring users back to a website. But only if they can find it! Structure the content so that it is easy to navigate around, and use terms that are relevant to your target market. A customer will not spend long in a physical premises if it is uninviting, if they cannot move around with ease, or find the layout confusing or staff unhelpful. It is much the same for a website.
In the same way, new and updated content is as important to your traffic as a shop window display. Give your prospective clients a reason to keep visiting, and they will be much more likely to return.
Returning users who do like a webpage’s content are more likely to link to that site, and lots of inbound links are great for search engine rankings.
Title Tag
The "Title" Tag is the "name" of the web page, which can be seen in the very top of the browser window (example below);
The Title tag can also be used for Search Engine Optimisation - search engines such as Google, rate the Title Tag highly. Here is an example of a title tag (the Sauce Design title tag);
"web site design Orange Central West NSW specialising in website design and web development, graphic design, logos, marketing for online and multimedia"
Adding a small amount of keywords and a description here can help boost your rankings, by affecting how easy is it for customers to find your website by searching for your company name, brand name, products or services.
Clean Code
Using neat and tidy code will help a search engine browse through your site and get the relevant information it needs. Not only does clean code make it easier to update, but by complying to W3C standards your site will have a longer life cycle and will be accessible across different browsers.
High quality markup (clean html code) will boost your search engine rankings.
Accessibility - by making your site acessible for all users, including for visually or hearing impaired users, is not only best practise but also helps a search engine browse your site. A search engine crawler does not look at your site visually, rather it 'reads' html text and also title tags. Avoid the use of images to display site content (excluding visual elements).
All Sauce Design websites are developed using best industry practise methods and are Search Engine friendly.