What Search Engines Value in 2007

A number of our clients are undertaking search engine optimisation of their sites, in recognition of the fact that being highly ranked in the search engines can result in many new potential customers coming to your site.

Visits to your site as a result of click throughs from searches are called "organic search results". When you compare these with click throughs on pay per click advertising (e.g. Google Adwords), organic searches reign supreme. Industry studies show that organic search results are 70-80 percent more likely to generate a click through than pay per click (often called sponsored links).

Below is a summary of what search engines are valuing more highly in determining which sites should be ranked above others:

1. Quality, natural content. The content on your site should read naturally and should be written for the visitor not for the search engine. Definitely don't build your content by screen-scraping or electronically "borrowing" content from other sites.
2. Updated content. Your website content should be updated regularly, indicating to the search engines that the information being provided is not only of quality, it is also up to date. This means valuable additional content, not just changing a few words or a date here and there. You would expect a site with no updates to reduce in rank over time.
3. Optimised pages. It goes without saying that pages that are optimised for the search engines will rank better than those that are not. Optimisation does not involve tricks to fool the search engines; rather it is proper use of HTML such as including descriptions for your images, and having an appropriate density of key words amongst your content.
4. Quality links. These may be reciprocal links (where you link to a website that links back to you), but only if that makes sense. For example, an optician's website that links to a glasses repair service makes sense, but it perhaps does not make sense for the repair service to link back. One way links to your site are preferable from related, quality, high-traffic websites. If you link to another website from your site, make sure that you are linking to a good quality site, as your link is regarded as a recommendation. Definitely don't link to websites that comprise just a list of links!

Overall, search engines will rank your website more highly if it naturally contains relevant, consistently up to date information, on readily identifiable topics. Old tricks such as keyword stuffing and hiding text haven't worked for a long time, and any attempt at tricking the search engines are likely to have a negative impact on your rank.

Of course, getting people to visit your website is the first step. Your website must be engaging and connect with the visitor in such a way as to encourage the visitor to take the next step.

If you need help with any of the above, please get in touch.