Elements of SEO

When optimising a website to appear high in the popular engine’s Natural (Organic) results we consider the following elements:

Keyword Research

• Keywords

On site SEO

• Website navigation
• Site Map
• Cross Linking
• Filenames and URL Structures

On Page SEO

• Page Titles and Headers
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords
• Alt Tags
• Copywriting (text content of a page)

Off Site SEO

• Back links and Page Rank

Other considerations

• Technical Elements
• Supplementary Content

Keyword Research

Keywords

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Keywords form the basis of any Search Engine Optimisation campaign so the most relevant and strongest keyword combinations should be identified and agreed at the start. We will make recommendations on the strongest yet realistically achievable keywords using our own intuition and experience, a variety of tools and live data as well as your input (since you know your business the best!)

On site Search Engine Optimisation

Website navigation

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The main navigation of your site is important as it guides your visitor around your site and helps them find what they need. It is also important for search engines to navigate your site so you should make it easy for them to find the most important pages on your site. Some of the design elements we will consider before making the necessary recommendations are:

• Does the navigation use flash?
• Does the navigation use images?
• Is there use of anchor text?
• Does the navigation use JavaScript?

Site map

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It is not always a good thing to link to every page on your main navigation so a sitemap should be used. We will consider the following:

• Is a sitemap present?
• Is a sitemap necessary?
• How is the sitemap structured?
• Is the sitemap Optimised?
• Where does the sitemap link from?

Cross Linking

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Cross linking is creating links between internal pages with relevant content. The presence of these links not only improves your visitor’s experience but they can benefit your site in the search engines. They provide more easy access to important pages as well as demonstrate that more, related content is available. We will advise on the best way to apply a cross linking strategy to your site.

Filenames and URL structures

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Every page on your website should have a meaningful URL structure and filename as it contributes to the search engines assumption of what a page is about.

This example tells search engines nothing about what the webpage is offering: www.website.co.uk/prodcat/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9Pykssy0x0I8Xw0i_IcFQxfAVE! A better filename would be: www.website.co.uk/product-catalogue/product-name.html

We may advise that existing filenames need to be changed or that URLs are re-written (URL rewriting)

On Page Search Engine Optimisation

Page Titles and Headers

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Any document is best given it a title that easily identifies the content. When you open that document you will likely confirm the content with a page title and/or headings. Search engines consider the title and page headers as strong indicators of the page content.

We review each of these elements and apply the best structure using keyword placement.

Meta descriptions

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The Meta description is an important tag, not because the search engines use them to rank you higher but it could be the first chance you get to pull in a visitor.

The description is displayed with your website on a number of search engine results pages, including Google. We will review your description and make sure it is well written, unique to the page, include the relevant keywords (so your potential visitor can see it is relevant to their query). Consider that a good description when you rank #3 might mean you attract almost as many if not more clicks than the site that ranks #1.

Meta Keywords

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The Meta Keywords were previously used by search engines to identify the content of a website. Since they were subject to a lot of abuse (see keyword stuffing) they are now not considered as important. However, since Search Engine Optimisation is about fine tuning your website Fluid Creativity still pays attention to this tag.

The Meta keywords are still considered by some search engines so it is no loss to include them for the lesser know search engines (it is believed Yahoo still do consider Meta keywords – if only a little.)

Alt tags

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Alt tags are ‘alternative text’ that are primarily there for accessibility purposes and accessibility guidelines stress that alt tags must be used for any image that depicts a message to the human visitor. Search engines also consider these tags as, when used as they should be, they offer further weight to a websites relevancy to a keyword search.

We reviewing the content of your alt tags we will consider the function of the image and the use of the key term within it.

Copywriting

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It is important to have lots of keyword rich content on your website. It should be written with the human visitor in mind, not for the sole benefit of search engines. Your Search Engine Optimisation must never be at the expense of good copywriting. Well written copy flows with targeted and related keywords falling into place naturally.

Off Site Search Engine Optimisation

Back links and Page Rank

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A good Page Rank (the Google PR) demonstrates that a website is an authority site. It’s good to have a high PR for a number of reasons, mainly because when you are seen as an authority and trusted site, the search engines will visit you and ‘deep-crawl’ your site more often. You can attract a starting PR with good navigation and a search engine friendly design. To build your PR you should attract links from authority, trusted and preferably related websites (with a high PR themselves)

A good PR helps overall but to encourage good ranks for your chosen keywords your website must attract links from quality and related websites using keywords as the anchor text.

Links should be gathered with caution. They should not grow too fast and appear as natural as possible. The links themselves should be optimised, where possible, for the keyword you are aiming to rank for.

If your Search Engine Optimisation campaign requires the link building placement we will approach this strategy using natural placement. We will gradually submit your site to search engine friendly directories, exchange links with related websites and in some cases we may advise that you invest in search engine optimised text link advertisements on related websites.

Other considerations

Technical Elements

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When the search engines visit your URL, you must be careful not to obstruct the spiders and give them every opportunity to crawl the content of your pages. There are some technical elements that can affect how the search engines view your site and therefore reduce your overall web presence:

JavaScript is not understood by the spiders. It will hinder or prevent any content positioned after it from being indexed. Where possible, JavaScript should be sourced from an external file or at the very least appear after any ‘spiderable’ content.

CSS is a very search engine friendly way of formatting a webpage (and removes the need for tables). This should also be sourced externally

Flash looks good on websites unfortunately it has no benefit where search engines are concerned. A site designed entirely using flash stands little chance of ranking well using ethical Search Engine Optimisation. Use flash elements sparingly, consider html alternatives and position any flash used below any spiderable content.

Dead links are one of the most common causes of falling ranks. Fix any broken links as soon as possible and ensure there is a search engine friendly 301 (permanent) re-direct in place for any pages that have moved. Never use JavaScript redirects or 302 (temporary) redirects for this purpose.

If you move a page to a new URL the search engine will still try to access that page. If you don’t tell the search engine where to go immediately ranks will be lost. Always redirect to the new or most relevant replacement page. Where there is no worthy replacement, redirect to the homepage the link should redirect to the homepage

Sites using a frames design can rank in the search engines but they are not the most search engine design. A number of factors can hinder the search engine spiders navigating the site and some of the fixes applied to improve the visitor experience can hinder the search engines more (using JavaScript to force full page reloads). Advancement in web design means it is not necessary to use frames and we will advise a search engine friendly redesign of the whole site before going to the expense of optimising a framed site.

Supplementary Content

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It may be necessary to create pages in addition to the core pages within your site. Reasons for these pages may be that you want to rank for a specific key term or if your website structure has elements that hinder the search engines. For example if your website is designed entirely in flash it cannot be crawled by the search engines we will build pages that provide supplementary content that can be crawled enabling visibility for your products and services in the search engines. These pages are:

• 100% search engine friendly
• Fully optimised for the required keyword
• Designed to look as identical as possible to the rest of your site

For more information about Fluid SEO read Search Engine Optimisation

Get in Touch

Want to discuss SEO? Get in touch by telephone on 0845 6588 373 or fill out our online contact form.