SEO Health-Check Your Website by our own Stephen Cree


Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be defined as applying techniques to a website and its content to get the highest possible placements on search engines.

Different types of listings are displayed in the result pages of search engines, including paid inclusion, pay-per-click advertisements and organic search results.

Effective use of SEO can increase the quantity and quality of visitors to your website.

Each website has its own target market. Directories and periodicals may look to attract a broad range of visitors covering a wide scope of interests though most sites target a specific type of visitor looking for a specific product or service. This is where focussed SEO strategies can deliver prospects to the point of sale and generate convertible sales enquiries.

The importance of having a good search engine placement cannot be emphasised too heavily. A retail comparison would be the difference between having a gift shop located in a side street with no passing trade or operating within a city centre retail quarter with thousands of potential customers passing by each hour of the day.

There are many techniques used to achieve improved search engine placements though search engines regularly change their algorithms - the formulas used to calculate search engine placements - so small site adjustments should continually be experimented with to maintain and improve a position.

Here are some SEO essentials to check your site against:

  1. Title tags should be written in a creative way. They should be written around the keywords chosen to draw in the ideal visitor. It is the most important optimisation tag of a web site.
  2. Carefully select the words and phrases to be assigned to Alt attributes. Alt attributes or "tags" are used to render text where the element itself cannot be rendered such as images on a hand-held device or screen readers for visitors with disabilities. The text chosen for the alt tag should describe the image or element and contain a key phrase.
  3. Manage keyword density. Keyword density is the percentage occupied by keywords or keyword phrases in a web page. Ideally, keywords are used once in the title tag, the heading tag, and in bold text. Keywords should be placed in the first twenty words of the main copy and key phrases should be liberally inserted throughout the text though, over-egging the pudding could leave you penalised by search engines so don't go potty!
  4. Determine the appropriate page size for the site. Speed is a vital element to the success of a site, and it important to both online visitors and the search engines. It is recommended to limit web pages to under 15K.
  5. Content is king and should be added to the site regularly. Keep it concise, authoritative and relevant to your subject and intended visitor.
  6. Inbound links are vital and the more credible and relevant the source, the better. It's of little use having a link to your architect partnership from the local tennis club. There's no relevance. It would be much better to have links to an established buildings surveyor or land agent. The more established the site linking to you, the greater credibility afforded to you by the search engines.
  7. Make the site design attractive to the viewer. All efforts in optimisation will be wasted if the site is poorly designed. There should be more text content than (x)html content in the web site. Viewers should be able to use the pages in all major browsers and JavaScript and Flash should be used sparingly.
  8. Stay away from the black hat techniques. Using them may serve you in the short term but could incur a blacklisting by search engines. Spamming is definitely a bad idea. The following dodgy techniques are considered evil and will ruin your business: doorway and identical pages, tiny or invisible text, cloaking, usage of keyword phrases in author tags etc.

Be aware that a good SEO campaign is planned over a reasonable period of time. Nothing happens overnight and the best SEO is sustainable and offers steady and manageable progression.

Beware of SEO companies who offer "Number One Search Engine Placements Within Ten Days":

  • No one can offer guarantees of number one placements
  • The phrase would have to be so obscure no one would search under it
  • There is a good chance that this is a Black Hat operation and your business will suffer.