How to optimise web pages for search engines

Optimising web pages for search engines and directories is not very different than developing web pages for human visitors. The main objectives remain the same - clean design, easy navigation and good content. In fact, when search engines rank pages they try to follow the same system of evaluations as most online searchers would.

Optimising ordinary HTML pages

HTML pages consist of two main section, a header and a body. Good search engine optimisation involves optimising both the header and the body for search engine spiders and human editors.

Optimising the HTML header:

The header is the section that lies between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags. For search engine optimisation purposes, the three main components of the header that need optimisation are:

TITLE: Lies between the <TITLE> and </TITLE> tags. Should provide a brief descriptive title for the page. No more than 60 characters.
DESCRIPTION metatag: Should provide a 2-3 line objective description of the page. No more than 250 characters.
KEYWORDS metatag: A list of comma-separated keywords. Very few search engines pay any attention to this tag nowadays.

Optimising the HTML body:

The body is the part of the HTML page that lies between the <BODY> and </BODY> tags. This is the most important part of the web page, in that it is the part that is immediately visible to your visitors and hence is also the part that search engines pay most importance to when ranking your site. The main components of the body that count towards search engine ranking are:

Text: The visible text on your web page is the single most important factor for search engine optimisation. Special weight is given to formatted text, such as headings, bold text, bulleted text and text contained in links.
Internal links: The internal links connecting various pages in your website are important for both search engine spiders and visitors to navigate through your site. Links must be easily accessible and intuitive to follow.

External links and page popularity:

Google and many other search engines measure the importance of a web page by the number of external sites that link to it, the number of visitors that click through to it and the time they spend on your site.

Optimising HTML pages with scripts or flash

Website that use dynamic scripts such as JavaScript, ASP or PHP and sites that use Flash can pose serious problems for search engine optimisation. Most search engine spiders will not crawl deep into pages whose links are generated through scripts or have many variables in them. Most search engines can also not read flash files, and those that do, don't do it very well. Hence most sites using dynamic scripts and effects can potentially miss out on search engine rankings.

The bast way to circumvent the navigational issues brought about through JavaScript menus is to add static links on the bottom of the page, or elsewhere in the page body, to supplement the dynamic menu links. The inability to read text and links embedded in Flash is best dealt with by creating a replica of the flash site using static HTML, and offering visitors and search engine spiders the option of visiting the HTML or the Flash versions.