Website Optimisation
Building and installing a website is only the first step towards getting exposure for your business.
Customers may arrive at your site via offline advertising methods, such as business cards, flyers, posters, newspapers and classifieds.
Or more commonly, they will find you on one of the search engines below:
Google will allow you to submit your site for free for consideration by their engines. But unless your site is optimised, well-linked, and follows the guidelines provided by Google, your site will be buried way below other competing sites. And lately, Google has paid a lot of attention to the age of the site, so new sites appear to go to a "sandbox" for several months, before gaining decent positions.
Optimising your page involves deciding which search terms your customer will use to look for you, and designing your page around those terms. For example, my site is optimised for those searching for "sydney web design". So my index page uses that term in the title, description, meta tags, headings, alternative text for images, and in the main content section. Sites whose entry page is a fancy Flash animation without text, although impressive-looking, will not rank as highly as a well-optimised page.
In addition, Google places great importance on incoming links to your site, and the text description associated with that link. And so I have exchanged links with other related sites, where the highlighted words "sydney web design" will link back to my site. For competitive search terms, the more incoming links you have, in conjunction with your page content, will give you a higher position on Google's results page. One-way links, where you do not have to reciprocate links, are valued highly. For this reason, sites are submitted to directories, and it is suggested that public articles be written, for inclusion on other websites, retaining a link back to your site.
Typically each web site page would be optimised for no more than two search terms.
However this free method of getting listed with Google may take months to achieve a good listing, so typically commercial businesses use Adwords, Google's pay-per-click (PPC) paid advertising program to gain early results on Google.
Yahoo
Yahoo has both a directory, and a search engine. It is generally easier to get a good ranking at Yahoo quickly, as long as you obey the rules. They do not place as much importance on incoming links as Google, preferring page content. You can still submit a site for free, but again, getting listed for free is generally a slow process.
Yahoo also owns Goto/Overture's paid submission and PPC advertising programs to provide commercial results onto Yahoo.
MSN
MSN currently uses Yahoo/Overture's paid PPC advertising, in conjunction with their own free search algorithm, which appears to like well-optimised page names.
Others
There are some smaller engines, with paid and/or free submission, where your site may be added. Non-commercial sites may be accepted by Zeal or DMOZ, manually-maintained directories, which provide input to the larger engines above. There are also often industry-related search engines and directories.
SYDNEY WEB DESIGN
Sydney Web Design can work with you in the planning and design stage, to determine relevant search terms, and how they should guide site construction. Keyword research is extremely important, in determining which search phrases are currently being searched for, and how many searches are performed each month.
Sydney Web Design uses external software to analyse search performance for chosen phrases, including the popularity of related searches, and current PPC bids on key search engines.
Sydney Web Design can perform initial free site submission, a link from our portfolio page, guidance on good sites to exchange links with, and for additional cost, can supervise/arrange link exchange with a specified number of sites.