SEO is the process of optimising your websites content and meta tags to gain the highest possible listing on the search engines.
The process of SEO (search engine optimisation) is to look at your current websites rankings for your defined keywords and making changes to the sites meta tags and content in order to rank higher in the search engines. Once you have made changes you need to let the search engines re-index your website and then assess the effectiveness of your SEO changes.
Meta tags are your websites title, description and keywords and are a snippet most search engines used to define what your web page is about.
The three main meta tags are the title tag which appears in the bar at the top of your browser, the description tags which is essentially a preview of your website and is commonly displayed in search engine listings and the keywords tag which isnt as important as it used to be but still important that its populated correctly.
A well built website built to W3C standards will rank better than one with errors.
Not exactly true and definately not proven but it cant hurt can it? W3C standards are a set of rules for developing websites to a required standard for maximum accessibility. By using the W3C validator it can highlight problems on your web page is almost like a spell checker for your website. Most errors can be resolved quickly but there are occassions when a rebuild may be necessary. W3C compliance should be expected for any new website and we at tumblefish ensure all our websites are 100% W3C compliant to ensure maximum success in the search engines.
Weve all heard of Google but who should you optimise your site for?
Most internet searches are done on Google and most of your SEO should be catered for this search engine. Other major search engines that need to be considered are MSN, YAHOO, ASK.COM, AOL and LYCOS.
Many of the search engines have their own algorithims for defining website rank but if you optimise for Google then you should also rank reasonably well on all of the other search engines.
This doesnt mean spraying it with paint but ensuring the search engines understand its layout.
Your website has to have correctly tagged content. If you imagine your website as a book which has headings, sub headings and paragraphs then your website has to follow this structure as well.
Use of H1, H2, H3 and P tags is crucial to having a well ranked site and ensuring the search engines understand how your web pages are layed out and what words are most important.