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101 is more of a target than an actual figure, but I’ll try to keep them in order of importance:

  1. Old websites are best on the basis that if you’ve been around for a while then you must be doing something right. That’s a bit harsh for good quality ‘new’ websites – you may need AdWords to give you good traffic in the short/medium term.
  2. Know your keywords and use them! Note that a keyword is actually a key phrase. You would be surprised how many sites ‘imply’ their keywords or show an image instead! Search engines ignore images and take what you write literally, so if you sell “spider web designs” call them “spider web designs” not “arachnid fly net images”.
  3. Provide good quality information about your product or service: make it rich in your keywords. But also make it compelling for humans. There’s no point in having lots of traffic that leaves immediately in disgust.
  4. If possible build good incoming links to your website. If you sell “spider web designs” then a link from the “Spider Web Designs Foundation” (if there were such a place) might be a good link, but a link from the “Free Links-for-all Federation” would be no good, and a link from the ” Federation of Ill-repute” could harm your search ranking. I hope none of those places actually exist!
  5. Google prefers emphasised text, so keywords that are in the URL, main title, heading, or otherwise emphasised in some way will have greater influence on Google than the main body text.
  6. The goal posts change regularly, this month’s rule 1 might be off the chart next month – although usually things are relatively stable unless you are in a very competitive industry.

101. The only thing certain is this world, and web optimisation is no exception, is that things change. Especially tricks and loop-holes.

Don’t bother with tricks – just write good compelling web copy, use your keywords, and link back to your site from forums and social media. Track what is happening with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster. Test things with Google AdWords.

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