General Search Engine Optimisation Tips

Google ranks web sites in a number of ways, one is by title of your home page. To improve your ranking, make sure the title of your home page is no more than 12 words long, preferably in groups of two words separated by a comma, and that you include your main key words in the title of your homepage - don't simply call it 'Home'!

Additionally, keywords are best written in your body text in groups of two, such as "web design", "corrugated boxes, corrugated cases" and so on. However, avoid too much repetition of keywords. "Keyword stuffing" as this is called, may only serve to reduce your overall ranking in the search engines.

Links to your web site from other ranked and recognised sites or directories play a key part in how Google and Yahoo will rank your site. (These are known as ranked in-bound links). Try to get your site registered with as many good quality directories as possible. Some are free, others make a small charge. This is well worthwhile.

Make sure all your web sites pages are indexed. A major fault most search engine optimisers and web designers make is only to optimise the home page. Google ranks pages, NOT web sites. Make sure your home page has direct links to every other page and optimise each pages text and keywords. You will vastly increase your chances of success. Cool home pages with no links to the rest of your site are no good at all.

Google especially, takes note of changing information on web sites and typically, you should try to add a page a month, or change the text on at least one of your pages regularly. Typically, between 200 and 300 words should be enough.

One way to obtain regularly changing data is by including something called an RSS feed in your web site. Really Simple Syndication or RSS allows you for example, to put live news from BBC.co.uk onto your own web site, so your automatically, get updated and changing news information on a daily basis. Google loves this sort of thing and we have used it to good effect in a number of web sites.

Make sure your web site has its own 'site map'. This makes Google and Yahoo's job of crawling and indexing your web much easier. Again, this is something most major search engines look for. This should be linked directly off your home page for best results.