Usually referred to as ‘SEO’, search engine optimisation is the process of making your web site visible on search engines such as Google and Bing.

  1. Choose your words carefully: The text on your site needs to include the words you want to be found under. Repetition of these words is called ‘key word density’ and it pays to find out what the most popular search term in your sector are by looking at the free Google Adwords KeyWord Tool. Make sure your text includes some of the less popular terms as you’ll have less competition.
  2. Use attention grabbing headlines: Avoid labelling the tabs at the top of each page according to the page type, such as ‘About Us’. Boost your search engine ranking by inserting popular keywords that you want to be found under in the headline, title and URL of each page. Your web designer or content manager can do this quickly and easily.
  3. Get to the point quickly: headlines, page titles and URLs as soon as possible. Avoid lots of connecting and descriptive words and phrases that aren’t directly related to your subject matter as they will dilute your keyword density.
  4. Keep it fresh: Regularly updated content wins points with search engines, which is why having a news page and/or a blog is a good idea. The trick is to make the content genuinely interesting while at the same time including enough keywords to get picked up by the search engines. If in doubt, err on the side of readability as there’s no point attracting web traffic if you have nothing interesting to offer them.
  5. Be a virtual cul-de-sac: Outbound links send the search engines, and visitors, to someone else’s site. Limit the number of ‘useful links’ you include and try to encourage people to link to you instead. Search engines love pages that have lots of reciprocal links from other related, respected and high-traffic websites, so build those networks and links.