Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation is the art of achieving as high a ranking as possible in the search engines.

Sadly, there probably isn’t one change that’s going to propel you onto that all-important first page of results.

There are, however, three key factors that will improve your rankings: links, content, and code.

Links – or hyperlinks, as they’re sometimes referred to – are snippets of code that, when clicked, transport you to a new location on the web. That location might be an external website, a different page on your website, or just elsewhere on the current page.

By linking to a different page, you’re ‘voting’ for that page as being worthy of note. The search engine  (Google, for instance) records this, and now considers the page to be more important.

Put simply, the more links you have to your site, the more important your site is considered to be. The more important your site, the more promise you have to rank highly.

But what search term do you want to rank highly for? “Hotels in Suffolk” probably has more searches than “Hotels in Southwold” – but if you’re a hotel in Southwold the latter would be a hotter lead, and much more likely to convert into a sale.

Having lots of links can fade into insignificance if you’re content is not focused on your search terms. If you don’t mention that you’re based in Southwold, how do you expect the search engines to know? Remember: robots and algorithms determine your rank, not people and research.

If you’ve got plenty of links and relevant content, you’ve got a good chance of ranking highly. However, making sure your keywords appear in the various HTML tags could make the all important difference between the first page of Google (and the all the website hits that come with it) and the second.

And that concludes this brief introduction to SEO. Remember: links, content, code.