18 July 2007
Search engine rank is based on a simple mathematical formula. A ranking algorithm uses page elements to assigns points to Web pages. Keywords are one of the most important page elements because virtually all search engines use them to rank pages and list search results.

Keyword Selection

Keyword selection is the most important step in optimising a page for the search engines - and where most people make mistakes. You can get all the top ten rankings in the world with unusual keywords, but you won't see any traffic unless people actually type them in as search terms.

Clarke Design uses keyword popularity tools to find out how popular your keywords are. We make sure your keywords are appropriate for your site and limit the number of keywords per page. Too many could dilute your relevancy score.

People assume a top ranking automatically means high traffic. But high rankings only bring traffic if the rankings are for good keywords. If you've done all your optimisation around "left handed bananas" and nobody enters that in a search engine you won't get any traffic.

Fundamentals

Start with the basics. If you don't do the fundamentals correctly, advanced tricks won't help you much. We'll look at the keywords you've selected and make sure they're in the strategic places where search engines look throughout your web site.

- Page Titles
- Meta Tags
- Image Tags
- Headings
- Body Text

Spamming

We'll also check your page for anything that might be considered spam by a search engine. Most spam is accidental, but it will get you banned just as quickly as intentional spam. If you don't have links, you won't rank well for competitive keywords.

Links

Link popularity and link quality are very important because every major search engine now considers them as a part of their ranking algorithms.

Submission

We'll then submit your web site to the major search engines to make sure that they know about your updated web site.

Please be aware that most people think they can submit one day and the spider will come the next day. There may be a considerable delay from when you submit your site to when the spider actually visits. This can be anywhere from a week to a few months depending on the search engine.