Check your websites SEO in 30 seconds

It only takes30 Seconds to see if yourwebsite will ever be successful on Google.

Getting to the top of Search Engines and in particular the top of Google can make a dramatic difference to the amount of business you can acheive from your website.

There are two ways to get to the top of google, oneis to pay (Google adwords), the other is by natural (Organic) methods.
The organicprocess is called Search Engine Optimisation.
Understanding the fundamentals does not require any specialist skills - in fact;

this article will show you how you can checkthe most important areas in just 30 seconds.

Understanding how Google works

Before optimising your website you need to be familiar with how Search Engines work.
When applyingSearch Engine Optimisation techniques,we always prioritise the Googlesearch enginebecause of its importance, but theprinciples we apply here will also apply toall the othermajor search engines.

Google Logo During the Search Engine Optimisation process, It is important to remember at all times that Google is simply trying to provide users with the most relevantweb pages for the keyword terms they have entered. This requires Google to arrive at your ranking or importance for the keywords or phrasesused.

Google isactually very good at this job and this makes it the most popular search engine by far with about 75% of the market.

A lot of useful information can be discovered just by taking a closer look at the results listings for a search performed in Google.

Here's a quick look at Google using the search term; web design companies bournemouth

Google search results for "web design companies" Bournemouth

Carry out a google search on keywords that apply to yourproduct or service, thentake a look atwho is top of the organic results.

Make sure that the search has been performed across the web - this is a default setting that most users will have selected.
Check the competition - take a look at the "Results" to see the number of other pages that will also contain the search term.
On popular terms, the "Sponsored Links" will be across the top 3 positionsas well as down the right hand column. Organic results appear directly under the sponsored links.
Read the title and description to the results - Keyword search terms will be in bold.
Click on 'Cached' link, this is a snapshot that Google takes of each webpage, often the keywords will be highlighted making it easy to see where they have been used. What date was the cache taken - was it recent?
Whilst still on the cached page, click on the cached text link - this will show you the pages text content without any design applied.

When does the Search Engine Optimisation process begin

Oftenwe are contacted by customers who request that we optimise their website once it has been constructed (normally because their current web designer is not particularly competent in Search Engine Optimisation techniques). An important message to get across here is this;
Search Engine Optimisation techniques should beconsidered at every stage of development and actually start prior to the design and development process. Researching the most effective keywords for your product or service will ensure that you have a realistic chance of succeeding (refer to point 2 above for an indication of the level of competition on a google search).

Search Engine Optimisation is a lot about doingall the little thingsrightand not just selectively concentrating on a fewareas. Much of the Search Engine Optimisation process requires techniques beingapplied duringdevelopment. Trying to correct these afterwards is not always possible and could require a complete rebuild.

The simple answer is tomake sureyou use a webdevelopment company thatfully understands the Search Engine Optimisation process.

Checking your website.

Now you have an understanding of what to look for on Google, we can start to tell you how to check your site.
As part of the web development process, we also use sophisticated software and programming techniques in many areas, however many of the most important areas affecting search engines can be easily checked.
This is an introduction into how to checkthe most important areas of your website todetermine if it is ever likely to acheive a high ranking on Google (and other search engines) or not!

Meta tags

Meta tags provide information or instructions to search engines and browsers, the information is not visible on the web page but is visible to search engines, it can be accessed by viewing the source code.
In internet explorer select; View>Source from the menu options at the top of the browser.

Example of Title, Keyword and Descriptionmeta tags;

<title>Web design company Bournemouth , Spear Bournemouth website designers, Search Engine Optimising (SEO) and internet marketing specialists.</title>

<meta name="description" content="Spear Solutions Bournemouth UK Web Design web marketing and ecommerce development specialists for business." />

Of the variety of Meta tags that can be used, it is important to know about;

Title, Keywords and Description.

Keyword meta tags are no longer referenced by the main search engines, but asgood practice, a few meta keywords should be included to helpthe smaller search engines that may still use it.

Nowadays when we refer to keywords or keyword phrases, we are usually referring to how they are applied within the actual page content.
The description meta tag may be used by Search Engines and should be accurate (Google doesn't always use it). Thisinformation may be displayed in the search engine results and could be the difference on someone clicking on the link to your website or not, so it should read well, but it is important that is also contains the keywords that you will be using on your page content.

Page titles

Page titles tell the search engines what your web page is about andthey are the most important factor on how search engines determine information about yourpage content. Each page on your website should have a different page tiltetitle and this should relate to your page content. The Search engine read the visible text on each page and compare it to the page title. Making sure that the page title reflects the page content is vital.
Your home page title is the most important but the other pages should not be neglected, remember that google tries to rank each page, not just the Home page.

Page titles appear at the top of the browser in the blue bar.

All browsers allow you to view the code that makes up the webpage. In internet explorer select; View>Source from the menu options at the top of the browser. The page title looks like this;
<title>Web design company Bournemouth, Spear Bournemouth website designers, Search Engine Optimisation... etc. etc. </title>

How to find the page title in the source code

The title code is referred to as a meta tag. Other meta tags include, keywords and description.

Search Engines must be able to read page content

Avoid the use of words, particularly keywords in images - Google is blind it can't read pictures (yet!). Remember how we visited the 'Cached' page (number 6 of 'Understanding how Google works")and took a look at the text content that Google had been able to read.

Many graphical designers will still insist on including a large amount of text within images. Primarily because it gives the designer the ability to style text or use fonts thatare not available when ensuring tha textremainsreadable to a search engine. This practice should be avoided at all costs - many attractive websites are completely invisible to search engines and will therefore neverget to be ranked onthe search engines. example of this can be seen at the Jane Moore Website, where content has been included just in graphics making the website invisible toSearch Engines www.janemoore.com

A guick test to see what istext content and what is an image, is to drag your mouse across the page. The text and images that make up the page will change colour (normally to Blue), the blocks of colour are the images and the text will show up as individual lines.
(try it now - drag your mouse across this page and you will see the graphic below change to a block of colour)

Page content should be kept separate from design. An old practice was to use tables to position design. This should be avoided at all costs, but it is still a common practice used by many web development companies and prevelant inbudget 'diy' website packages.
All you really need to know for now is how to spot tables when examining source code. If your website is correctly developed using modern standards the design elelments (images) that make up the visual style of your website are kept separate to the content (readable text). This is not the right time to go into detail on this subject, other than to show you how to spot if your website has been developed using tables.

Example of tables based development

Example of tables tags;

<tr>
<td><img src="/_images/splash/_bg/spacer.gif" width="199" height="1" border="0" alt="" /></td>

example; Jane Moore home page

Another disadvantage of using tables is that the web page becomes very heavy with code - what this means in practice is that the search engine has to work harder to find the text it can read.
If you are about to commission a new development, ensure that the website is going to be developed to XHTML 1.0 standard and that tables will not be used to position images (see the section below; Website code should be written to the latest web standards).

Include Keywords and Keyword phrases in the page content

Now we understand that search engines arereading the visble text, we also need to check what conclusions it reaches after reading it.Firstly, Google willreference the page title against the keywords and keyword phrases on the page. Google will also check your metatag description and decideif this is relevant to the page content, the Googlebot (Googlebot is Googles name forthe robot that visits websitescollecting this data) will then decide whether to use all of the description, some of it or often it will just add it's own.

By now you shouldbe aware that keywords and keywords phrases are critical to ensuring that the Googlebot has been given the right clues to describe what you website page is about.
Adding a few keywords here and there is not enough and keyword cramming (adding excessive keywords to a page) will result in you going down rather than up the search engines!

There is a way to emphasize the importance of your keywords to Google.

Words that are in headings carry more importance than the same word in a paragraph.

Where possible make sure that your page content is semantically correct and try to ensure that your keywords are in the heading tags
(Once again, this information can be viewed in the source code. In internet explorer select; View>Source from the menu options at the top of the browser).

<h1> I am a heading 1 tag, I am the most important </h1>

<h2> I am a heading 2 tag, I am the second most important </h2>

<p> I am a paragraph tag, I am not as important as any heading tag</p>

It is important to make sure that keywords are included in heading tags.

If you have a website that has a content management system which allows you to edit your pages, you should find that the editor will allow you to assign Headings without having to jump into the code.

Images should have alt tags

Images on website should have an 'alternative'(Alt ) text description. This allows written information to be displayed for those who cannot see the graphical image. (Remember the Googlebot is blind). Whilst this will not make a dramatic difference from a search engine point of view, as mentioned earlier, it is important to get tackle the small areas that all make up the whole. Bear in mind that alt descriptions are essential for website users who are blind, so should be included as best practice on those grounds alone.

Website code should be written to the latest web standards.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C www.w3c.org) recommend the operating standards for the internet.
To check that a website has been constructed properly they provide a validation tool. There are many advantages to ensuring that your website has been built to the current standards, not least the fact that your website will perform badly on the search engine if it isn't.

Often a well written website will have a link to validation page, check that the standard it validates at is XHTML. Treat this as the 'Kite Mark' for website development. If your website does not validate, your website has problems.

If you can not find a link on a page, you can enter the website address in manually. Remember that the validation tool only checks an individual page. Repeat the test on everypage that you want to check.

Example: www.activeinternetsupport.co.uk(link at bottom of the page)

Example: janemoore.com

Link to validation tool; http://validator.w3.org

Now it is time to put it all together and see if you can acheive a website appraisal in just 30 seconds.

Choose a website and follow the process described above.
If it is your own website that you are checking and it takes you longer, remember that the time you spend now will save you wondering why your website is nowhere to be found in the future.

It's not uncommon for some website owners towait years in anticipation oftheir website becomingsuccesful on the search engines. You willnow be able to tell whyit won't in under a minute!