Search Engine Optimisation Techniques:

There are many factors that go into search engine optimisation that require careful consideration and adjustments to get the best results for search engine placement.

There are five main areas that we focus on to improve your search engine visibility. These are 'URL Structure', 'Web site Structure', 'Content Optimisation', 'Code Optimisation', and 'Others'. Below, these areas are broken down so that you can further understand what is needed for a successful search engine optimisation campaign.

URL Structure:

• Domain Name:
  We will analyze the domain name ie. www.compelite.net and recommend any changes if necessary.
• Domain Extension:
  Sometimes it is preferred to have a specific domain extension (.com, .org, etc.) depending on your companies location, type etc.
• Domain Registration Length:
  If possible it is better to register your domain for a longer period of time, say 5 or 10 years, as search engines will recognise this as being a stable and trustworthy domain, as apposed to one that is purchased for 1 year or renewed every year.
• Keyword Use:
  We will analyze the use of keywords in your URL including what effect they will have to boost your rankings.
• Document Depth:
  We analyze the URL document depth and make changes if necessary to your URL structure.
• URL Age:
  The age of your URL is important to search engines as it shows that your company is stable and worth indexing.
• Multiple URL Use:
  Often companies will register several domains that are similar to their own, varying slightly in spelling or word order. Unless set-up correctly, this can be viewed as an attempt to spam search engines, and can push your website to the bottom of listings, or at worst your website may be removed from search engine listings.
• Historical Ranking:
  Analysis of previous ownership of your domain or your intended domain.
• Session ID Variables:
  Session ID VAriables are often created when a content management system is used to create a web site. Depending on the number of variables, this can often have a debilitating effect on a web site's visibility in search engines. As search engines are often 'afraid' of getting caught in an endless loop of documents they will generally avoid any web pages with more than two variables in the URL. For example, when I type 'session id' into Google, the resulting URL is displayed as: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&
  q=%22session+id%22&btnG=Google+Search
  Here you can see that there are 3 variables, each separated by an "&" symbol.

Web site Structure:

• Internal Linking Structure:
  Optimisation of your document/web page linking structure.
• External Linking Structure:
  Analysis of the sites that link to your web site as well as those that you link out to.
• Document Depth:
  Optimisation of the linking path required to get to documents within your web site.
• Broken Links:
  Links which no longer work, are a sign that a web site is out of date, and will therefore be less important to index by search engines.

Content Optimisation:

• Keyword Use in Content:
  We will optimise the keyword density of your content where necessary to make sure that terms are not overused or considered as spam by search engines.
• Document Accessibility:
  Optimisation of the accessibility of the documents within your site.
• Content Relevance:
  The relevance of the content on your site, including the structure of content and its relevance on each page within your site.
• Organisation/Layout of Content:
  Often the order of text, or layout in relation to headings and images, as well as navigation are an important factor in search engine indexing.
• Document Length:
  Depending on subject matter, document length is important not only for search engine indexing, but also for usability.
• Grammar/Spelling:
  A poorly edited document will also get a poor ranking in search engines as the quality of a document is very important as search engines strive to give its users quality information.
• Stop word Frequency:
  The use of common words such as the, it, where, how etc. determine the style of writing and can have various effects on indexing frequency by search engines.
• Link Use:
  Link use and location within content is optimised, as this will determine the relevance of a document.
• Illegal Terms/Content

Code Optimisation:

• Title Tag Text:
  The Title Tag tells a search engine what your site is about. We will optimise length, word order, keyword use, etc to get the best search engine visibility.
• Meta Tag text/use:
  Due to the overuse of meta tags in the past, little value is given to them now. In some cases it is best to remove them completely.
• Alt Text:
  Correct use of Alt text is paramount as they are approaching the same fate as meta tags. Alt text will give a short description of an image on your web page. This is most useful for when a user has images turned off in their browser.
• W3C Validation:
  These are the standards to be met in relation to web site coding. This is often considered a ranking factor for search engine visibility.
• Content:Code ratio:
  When a search engine indexes your site, it will read the code as well as the content. If there is too much code, or poorly edited code a search engine may just 'give up' and move onto the next site for indexing. It is highly important to optimise your code effectively to make sure the search engine 'sticks around'.

Other Factors:

• Document Age
• Document Quality
• Variety of Document Changes
• Percentage of Document Changes
• Document Type
• Site Age
• Web Site Size
• Document Size
• Hosting Location
• Use of Frames
• Hosting Uptime
• Use of robots.txt file
• Duplicate Content

As you can see, there are many factors that are relevant when optimising one's web site. More importantly, all must be considered in relation to each other when optimising a web site, to make sure that a search engine will consider the optimised web site to be of high importance, rather than an attempt to spam the search engine, which often results in exclusion from its search results.

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