Here are the top 5 factors for successful web sites in 2007:

Note:

This article is four years old but all of these factors still hold true with regard to getting good search rankings in Google.

Success factor #1: Accessibility

Accessibility is not only good for business it is a legal requirement and necessary for search engines to be able to effectively spider and index your website. Often web developers use technology that actively impedes search engines and prevents them from accessing all of a website’s pages. The first rule of search engine optimisation is to allow a search engine to access all of your web pages.

A key secondary consideration is to ensure the HTML code of your web pages does not contain errors that prevent search engines from indexing your site.

Search engines like HTML, it allows them to assess the content of your site and determine what the content is about. If you use Flash or graphical images to portray your core text messages, it will be invisible to search engines. Ensure your core content and messages are in HTML.

Success factor #2: Site and information architecture

Site architecture is essential not only for search engines but also for your audience. A search engine needs to be able to find their way around a site effectively as do site visitors. Ensure you have a core logical HTML navigation and do not use Flash or javascript as the only method of accessing your web pages.

You also need to ensure you have a coherent website based around a common theme. Increasingly the most important search engines use a technique called latent semantic indexing in their ranking algorithms. This is to determine not only the content of the individual page but also the context of the site that is sitting within. Search engines will give higher rankings to a page that is within a website that is relevant to that page.

Success factor #3: The right keywords

Once you have ensured that a search engine can access your site and visit all of your pages you need to make sure that they know what those pages are about. This is where you need to focus upon your key phrases and ensure you find which phrases your audience are using to find websites such as yours that meet their needs.

Once you have these key phrases, ensure you place them effectively throughout your site on the most appropriate pages for those terms.

The choice and use of your key words is a crucial element in determining whether your search engine optimisation campaign will be a success. Also think about supporting key words that go with the main key phrase for that page and use them liberally within the content

Success factor #4: Content

The search engines are looking for the most appropriate pages they can find to match the search terms of their users. In order to do this they are looking for quality content. You should be aiming to create unique quality content that separates your site from your competitors.

Write about relevant topics that you know about and try and keep adding to the content on a regular basis. Google likes sites which are kept fresh with new content and also sites that are regularly updated with relevant content.

Success factor #5: Inbound links

Links are one of the key factors that determine the success of a search engine optimisation campaign, but are one of the least understood. Links are crucial, especially in a competitive marketplace, but it is not about sheer weight of numbers. RELEVANCY is far more important than numbers. Get good quality links from quality relevant sites on a regular basis and you will do far batter than buying a large number of non-relevant links.

The more targeted the link i.e. the more relevant, the more it will improve your search engine rankings for that phrase. That’s why we are creating several sector link building communities to help build quality links for sites.

So, What do you want to do now?

1. Contact us to help you improve your search engine results, or
2. find out more about working with an ethical search engine optimisation company.

Back to view other articles.