Search Engine optimisation

Design and content of a site:

Good design of a site not only helps human users navigate easily around your site but also allows the non-human search engine robots. These robots 'crawl' through web sites and analyses them. The results of this analysis then goes some way to deciding how high or low in the rankings a page should appear. If the design of a site does not follow a set of basic guidelines, these robots falter in their job and back off, leaving the web page, or site as a whole, un-indexed.

There is another point to be made about good design practice above what has already been mentioned is concerning rights of access for people suffering from disabilites. People with disabilities, such as impaired vision or hearing use programs that perform badly if a site has been badly designed in much the same way as the search engine robots. So by not following these guide lines, you will not only be loosing custom by not apearing in the search engines, but you could also be breaking the law in certain countries. In the UK the disability act 1995 final rights of access came into force on 1 October 2004.

The content of a site, not surprisingly, has a lot to do with how well a site does in the rankings. Information rich and useful content will always do the site well, regularly updated content is even better. The important point to be made here is the 'value' of the content is increase by acurately describing it in the title and header of the page. Using descriptive keywords that apear in the content will help people and search engines find what they are looking for.