Search engine optimisation
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OVERVIEW
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of making a website attractive to search engines. The result is to increase traffic to a website and as such SEO is a Internet marketing tool.
Search engine ranking
Different search engines use their own set of algorithms to determine how search results are presented and the details of these are often not shared publicly.
However several factors are understood to have a positive effect on search engine rankings and should be borne in mind when creating your online content:
- external website links
- relevance and frequency of keywords to describe content
- ensuring code is not a barrier to search engine robots that crawl websites
- the frequency with which content is updated
External website links
When planning your online content consider external websites that already attract your audiences and might be interested in your work. Prepare information (a summary of the content and its purpose, perhaps a press release) to send them with an invitation to link to your pages. It helps if you can offer a mutual link on your own site.
Optimising text and description
Ensure that the language used to describe your content is relevant and succinct. Include synonyms ( e.g. audio books and talking books or education and learning) where appropriate. Do not be tempted to include in appropriate keywords since this can result in search engines removing your site from their indexes.
Technical advice for SEO
Search engines offer advice to webmasters as to how to optimise pages for SEO purposes (see further information below). This relates to good site design as a whole with clear page titles and the avoidance of using excessive or irrelevant tags in the hope of driving traffic to your online content. in addition the more frequently your content is updated the more frequently a search engine will crawl and update its indexes.
CHIN and SCA research
The better a website is optimised, the higher its ranking will be in search result listings. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has undertaken to investigate the hypothesis that implementing a few simple and inexpensive SEO techniques can increase an organisation’s web visibility and significantly augment traffic to the organisation’s website.
In support of this hypothesis, it undertook case studies on SEO in collaboration with the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) and three UK organisations: Swansea University, the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design and the Archives Hub and evaluated the case study participants’ current websites and recommend changes to optimise them and remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
Their final report was supported by a three day short course hosted by JISC and CHIN about search engine optimisation at which Thierry Arsenault of CHIN spoke and described some of the work being undertaken in Canada. His slides are available here
Related Digipedia article
Further information
The Impact of Search Engine Optimisation on Organisations' Websites a report by CHIN and SCA, November 2009.
Webopedia article: How search engines work
Yahoo! Search quality content guidelines
Canadian Heritage Best practice guide: search engine optimization
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