Search Engine Optimisation
Written by John Cavanagh

Part 1

Does the text on your homepage start with “welcome to my website”? This article will explain how text like this can negatively impact upon your search engine rankings, leaving customers with no hope of finding your products or services on the web.

This month I will discuss one main area of Search Engine Optimisation – Web page optimisation. I will demonstrate how to optimise individual Web pages on your website so that your products and services are found by potential customers.  I will use an existing business and one product as an example:

The Business – The Funky Group

Website Address – www.thefunkygroup.co.uk

Product – Pink GHD Straighteners – found on http://www.thefunkygroup.co.uk/cat-3-subcat-9-product-481

Focusing on one product I can identify the areas that make up the product’s page and highlight how search engines, such as Google, spider or index it.

Web Page Optimisation
Each Web page contains a number of areas that can be managed to help increase online visibility for search engines.  These include:

1.         Title Tags

2.         Description Tags

3.         Webpage Body Content

4.         H1 Tags

5.         Alternative Text Tags

Title Tags
The title tag should be about 60 character long including commas, spaces and full stops and is the most important of all tags for search engines.  The title tag can be seen at the top of the screen depending on which web browser you are using.  All websites should have unique title tags for each individual Web page, as this is a fantastic opportunity to market your business brand and the specific product or service your company is offering.  Therefore, title tags should include your brand, product or service and key search terms and should highlight the page you are trying to promote. For example the Funky Group has labelled their GHD Pink Straighteners page as follows:

<TITLE>GHD New Mk4 Pink Professional Ceramic Hair Styler & Straightener – The Funky Group</TITLE>

If you search using the following terms, you will find this product ‘GHD Pink Straightener’ on page 1 of Google for the business The Funky Group.

•          GHD Mk4

•          New MK4 Styler

•          GHD New Mk4 Pink

•          GHD Mk4 Pink

•          Pink Mk4 Styler

•          Pink Mk4 Straightener

It is imperative to use your chosen keywords near the start of the title tag i.e. GHD Mk4 Pink.  There are many other searches that a customer could use to find hair straighteners and these other terms could be incorporated into the title tag and webpage.  However, based on research, these terms were considered the appropriate keywords and phrases to use at the time of this product launch in October 2006.

If you have a website that incorporates many Web pages, consider the following for your title tags.

1.         Create a unique title tag specific to every single page
            of your site

2.         Use the most important keywords early in the tag
            – GHD Mk4

3.         Use your company name in every tag - towards the end for
            branding

4.         Think about key search terms or phrases (what are people
            going to search for)

5.         Avoid sales pitches and slogans

Description Tag
The description tag is not displayed anywhere on the web page itself and is hidden in the website code; however some search engines index it.  A description should be around 150 characters long and should be a simple sentence that includes the specific keywords of the product or service that you are discussing on the specific page. 

The description tag for the GHD Pink Straighteners is below:

<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Buy GHD New Mk4 Pink Professional Ceramic Hair Styler & Straightener from The Funky Group online shop">

Webpage Body Content
Body content is the actual written content on the web page itself. The Web page body content should discuss the product or service that you are trying to promote within the first two or three sentences. Below are the first three sentences from the GHD Pink Straighteners Web page body content:

“GHD Mk4 Pink Professional Ceramic Hair Styler & Straightener - the Holy Grail of Hair Styling Tools.  These are the brand new MK4 GHD Pink Professional Ceramic Hair Styler's, what are you waiting for!

Be the first to own GHD's new MK4 Pink Professional Ceramic Hair Styler in sizzling new hot-pink. The 2006 GHD pink styler comes in an exclusively designed roll-mat with all new packaging. With a funky new sleek design, rounded barrel for improved curling and styling, auto adjust for international voltages, stronger cable and a new sleep mode which turns itself off after 30 minutes!”

Highlighted in bold are the product and search terms that potential purchasers of this product might use in their search on Google, Yahoo, or MSN.  Additionally, this page discusses and promotes only one specific product which is key for promotional activity. 

Header Tags
Header tags are another important area to include keywords in.  Header tags are normally displayed on a web page as a section heading. For the Funky Group, you will find that a header tag reads as the following:

<H1>GHD New Mk4 Pink Professional Ceramic Hair Styler & Straightener</H1>

Alternative Text Tags
When browsing a website, search engine spiders cannot read image files unless they have an alternative text tag - “Alt Tag”

The use of an ALT tag provides a text description for images on a page. This feature works when:

•          The mouse hovers over the image

•          The visual images don’t download

•          A screen reader is used

The Alt tag of the image on the GHD Pink Straighteners webpage is the following, keywords in bold.

<TD WIDTH="275" BGCOLOR="#FF0066"><IMG xsrc="prod-img/Pink_ghd_Mat_350.jpg" ALT="New Mk4 Pink Professional Ceramic Hair Styler & Straightener"NAME="ProductImage" WIDTH="275" HEIGHT="275" BORDER="0"></TD>

1. Search Engine Optimisation
When “crawling through” a website, search engine spiders only understand what an image is displaying if it has alternative text associated with it. Businesses have the opportunity to include key words in their alternative text descriptions, increasing the chances of their website getting found when a customer types in those keywords into a search engine. To achieve the best results on search engines, alt tags should contain of maximum of 70 – 80 characters.

2. Website Accessibility
Under the Disability Discrimination Act, businesses have a legal responsibility to make their product or services accessible to everyone. This includes any products and services promoted online. Failure to do so is potentially discrimination under the Act.

Search engine optimisation is a huge area and this article demonstrates only one aspect of this wide ranging topic - web page optimisation.  However, my next article will dicuss other areas of search engine optimisation and why they are equally important to your online strategy.

To discuss this or other aspects of web page optimisation, please feel free to contact me.

John Cavanagh
Com.Motion Consulting Ltd
102 East Main Street
Armadale
West Lothian
EH48 2NZ

Tel:    0131 2026345
Mob:   07746684876
Email:  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Web:  www.com-motionuk.com
Skype: John_Cavanagh

If you do get in touch with John, please do remember to mention The-Grapevine.