Welcome to the seminar Housekeeping notes – fire exit, tea/coffee break/loos Asking questions is OK, but can we try to keep them to the theme of the current section About Me About The Hysterectomy Association
email, websites, visit pages, surf, look for information?
So understanding how search engines work is the key to understanding how to get your site indexed properly and thus showing up in the results pages. Getting the search engines to love you takes just a few simple steps. Your site must be relevant to the search term that someone has looked for. In the past some websites have used a variety techniques to ensure that they appeared in the search listings, including over use of meta tags (small bits of information coded into the website that explain what the site is all about, white text, etc..... However, now relevancy is determined by the content of the site. The reason the hysterectomy association ranks so highly is because the whole site it about hysterectomy! If a site can’t be indexed then the search engine think it has only one page – what causes this effect, the most obvious culprit are frames – those annoying sites that seem to have slider bars along the edge of the menu system. They may be easy to create, but the links only ever show one web address and not the right address for each page with it’s relevant content. Therefore the web address is www.your-site.co.uk or www.your-site.co.uk/surfing The popularity of a site is measured by a, the number of people that visit it and b, how long they stay there when they have reached it. Therefore, if someone clicks on a link on Google to go to your site, what you want is for them NOT to hit the back button as Google (and others) will take this to mean that the site isn’t relevant or popular. To have a Clout, a site must be an authority as determined by other websites. Therefore other popular websites that link to you in a relevant way, will give you more clout than sites that aren’t as well known. I’m fortunate that the NHS, the BBC, several women’s magazines and other women’s health sites all link to me. Is it updated? if it isn’t updated regularly then it won’t be indexed by the search engines regularly and it will be perceived by their software to be irrelevant. How frequently you update does depend on the information you are trying to get across and who is using it though! Your site must respond to the visit of search engine software, if it doesn’t then the search engine assumes that you no longer exist – this is the main reason why you need to have a host that has a good reputation for up time. Does the site have longevity? The longer a site is around (and some last just a few weeks or months) the better search engines will rank you.
This is the search I did for what is search engine optimisation. Take note of the words in bold in the search results – this is where google has highlighted the key words from the search term we used, this is one of the most important aspects of the SEO operation. The first line, underlined is the TITLE of the page that the link will take you too! When you look at the pages on the website’s you will see that the words are repeated on the page.