Search engine placement - long term strategy and success
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2006-12-30 12:25:24 - Graham Ellis
"Whenever I search for anything in Melksham, I keep coming back to your site". So say some of our friends; new contacts tend to be along the lines of "So YOU are the ones behind that web site I keep finding".
We encourage the search engines to index our pages, and we know that many of our technical and local area pages ARE read, used, appreciated. It's quite intentional and it does help keep us in touch with past students, to make contact with potential new ones, and to help (for free) those who are too distant from us or who don't need a full course just for one answer.
What places site "A" above site "B" in search engine rankings? There are whole books on the subject, algorithms change over time, and there's a great deal of secrecy in order to keep the playing field level. There's amateurs who will tell you they know the technical secrets, and charge you for their thoughts. There are professionals who do know at least some of the current detail. But I think the real, long term keys to success are as follows:
a) Provide plenty of useful and accessible content
b) Follow the philosophies of the web
c) Make your information search engine friendly
Providing useful and accessible content is no magic, short term thing. I mean providing original text, information that people will be seeking, with plenty of links around the site so that it's reachable. And the information should be updated as necessary and not allowed to go stale either. If in doubt, provide more information and more pages rather than less - we're amazed at the number of visitors who arrive through obscure searches at slightly surprising pages. And your human readers who arrive at your main pages don't HAVE to follow your "History of Beanacre" link, nor your "Beanacre A350 traffic" link if they're just looking for your B&B, do they?
The philosophy of the web is 'open' and 'more'. Wondering whether to put in a link to the local Tourist Information Centre? Why not? You can always have it pop up in a fresh window if you don't want to loose your visitors, but better to have the link than not. You'll be 'rated' by the search engines as a real part of the web (and the whole word 'web' does encourage networking pages!) and your ranking will be helped. But don't go over the top and provide what's just a 'link farm' either.
Should you do the 'technical stuff' like robots.txt files, metatags with descriptions and keywords? I would answer 'yes' even through people argue about the need for an empty robots file, and about which engines use the metatgs. It can do no harm ... and it might do a whole lot of good. And help the search engines by keeping content well apart from style and any script you need.
Are these magic keys to guaranteed engine placement? Of course they're not - but they will help tip the balance in your favour. The cost, though, is a lot of time invested now and in the future. Search Engine placement is rather like driving a big oil tanker. You start the propellor going and at first nothing appears to be happening. You just sit there and wonder whether you actually flicked the switch. But then, very gradually, you start to see movement. And, given some time, you're headed in the right direction. Now you had better be careful to avoid the rocks ...