Basics of search engine optimisation – Part four – Alternate Text

Whenever you place an image on your website the alternative text for that image should be specified. Alternate text is also known as alt text or alt tags. Alternative text is used as a replacement for an image, whenever the image cannot be seen. This can happen, for example, when someone:

• uses a speech browser (e.g. a visually impaired person)
• uses a text-only browser (e.g. lynx or browsing from a mobile phone)
• uses a web browser with images turned off

Alternative text is also used in other circumstances: for example, Google image search uses alternate text to help return appropriate images.

Below is an example of good alternate text in programming code -

Here is a picture of Bridget, the dog.
<img src=”bridget.jpg” alt=”Irish Red Setter Dog”
title=”Irish Red Setter Dog” />

Top Internet Brands

Danny Sullivan over at searchengineland has a really interesting post about the top  brands online – no surprises here with Google being the biggest brand and Yahoo and Amazon the next two.

It’s pretty remarkable that Google has grown in less than a decade to become the most dominant brand online. Since those very early days of backrub Larry Page and Sergey Brin have always been at the forefront of how search results should be collated and organised and it’s no wonder that Google has grown so quickly. Below is a screen shot of Google circa 1997 -

Even way back in 1997 the basics were apparent – a clean simple search interface which presented the searcher with results quickly. I guess in a world where everything is getting more technically advanced it take genius to go with a simple interface that allows anyone with limited technical knowledge to use it.

Larry and Sergey’s original set up for Google/Backrub is shown above. They’ve come a long way in a short time

BTW Anyone who is interested in the top online brands here goes;

The brand ranking was as follows:

1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. Amazon
4. eBay
5. MySpace
6. Microsoft (including MSN)
7. AOL
8. Apple
9. Others

#1 on Google

Pleasant surprise today – one of our customers websites AMBS Mortages is #1 on Google after the web site being live for only 11 days.

UK Public believe Google will still be #1 in Five Years Time

An online survey of approximately 1,100 people in the UK  found that 61% of respondents believed that Google would still be the leading search engine in five years.

When asked “Do you want Google to be the leading search engine in five years time?” the response was somewhat different, with a smaller majority (53%) saying yes.

“Do you think Google will be the leading search engine in five years time?”

“Do you want Google to be the leading search engine in five years time?”

The survey authors draw the conclusion that the UK public perception of Google has been largely unaffected by controversies that get lots of coverage among search industry insiders.

It’s also interesting that  56% of women than men wanted Google to remain the main search engine of choice for the next five years. This suggests that more women are happy with using Google search than men.

Another way to view these data is that 46% of the UK audience (second question) is, to varying degrees, open to alternatives to Google.

Nine Reasons Why Your Search Rankings May Drop

Aaron Wall has posted a great article over at SEOBook about nine reasons why your rankings may be dropping in Google. Definitely worth a read if your struggling to get to grips with why your site isn’t performing well in the search engines.

Holiday Time

I’m off on holiday tommorow – off for a few days to Cornwall – a very beautiful and rugged part of the country and, despite the dreadful weather we’ve had, I’m determined to have a great time walking along the beautiful beaches.

I’m going to rest and recharge my batteries – ready for my return to begin work on the new Rapid Site 3 with Stuart, one of senior web developers. Exciting times at Customerstreet, as we are working on the new Rapid Site Editor.

For those of you who don’t know what a Rapid Site is – it’s a simple easy to use website editor that allows our customers to update their website, add new pages and images etc. We wrote it specifically for Customerstreet customers. And we want to make it even easier.

This new website editor will be very user friendly and will generate search engine friendly code that the search engines will be able to index easily. All the text generated will be semantic – it will read like any normal page of text if you were to remove all the programming code. As search engines are only really interested in text it makes sense to show the search engines as much text as possible.

We’re also looking at making the rapid site editor even more easy to use and we’ll create an intuitive system that will help with writing text that is suitable for the search engines. One of the problems we realise that our customers may have is that they struggle to write suitable text for their web pages.

And that’s the reason I’m here working at Customerstreet – to help our clients to get as high as possible in the search engines listings whether it’s by improving the Rapid Sites and making them more search friendly or getting our Ufindus, MoreUk and Smileocal directory listings to the top of the search engines.

Either way it’s a task that I relish – there’s nothing better than seeing top results for our clients – it’s a vindication that what we’re doing is working and it’s working for our customers.

In fact we’re very lucky our customers are in the position of being able to get found very quickly in the main search engines. It can take up to 12 months for a website to begin to get anywhere in the main search listings on Google. We’ve just had one customer who has been found at #10 on Google for “Roofing Supplies Liverpool” after only two days!

This goes to show that what we are doing is working. But that’s not enough for us – we want everyone of our customers to be even more successful in the search engine listings.

Basics of search engine optimisation – Part Three – Meta Content

Meta Content describes the contents of a Web page. It’s not visible on the web page (it’s in the programming code in the background) but is seen by search engines. You can only see meta content if you look at the programming code for your web pages or use an editor to build your web pages.

Meta Content was first created to “make sense” of the growing number of web pages that appeared on the Internet.

Meta Content (often called Meta Tags) often appears in search engine results, so making sure that your Meta Descriptions are relevant and well written will help to ensure that people will click on your web page listing in the search engines.
Search engines are placing less importance on Meta Keywords than in the past, however it‘s still important to provide meaningful descriptions and keywords. All Meta descriptions and keywords should be unique and apply to a specific web page.

Here are some guidelines to what you should look at – they will help you to write Meta content that the search engines will understand and use effectively.

Description – Use 15-20 words maximum, starting with several of your important keywords. Try to make the description as compelling and as relevant as possible for people who may look at your website.

<META content=“Builder Stevenage,builders in stevenage,stevenage builders” name=keywords>

Meta Keywords Tag – List your keywords up to a maximum of 30 words. Use keywords that are relevant to the page, with or without commas. Try not to use the same keyword more than twice.

<META content=“Lee Builders – Stevenage – home extensions, loft conversions and general building” name=description>

 

Basics of search engine optimisation – Part Two – Titles

Write descriptive page titles

By making your page titles simple, yet descriptive and relevant, you make it easier for search engines to know what each page is about, and people scanning through the search engine results can quickly determine whether your web site contains what they are looking for.

The page title is also what is used to link to your site from search result listings.

The Page Title is held in the programming code on your web page – it may seem daunting when you first look at the programming code but the truth is that it’s quite simple – the Title is what the search engine looks at first to decide what your web page is all about

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>For a builder in Stevenage come to Lee Construction.</TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="Builder Stevenage,builders in stevenage,stevenage builders" name=keywords>
<META content="new builds, extensions,  garages,  garden walls" name=description><!-- StyleSheetStart-->

<LINK href="includes/style3.css" type=text/css rel=stylesheet><!-- StyleSheetEnd--></HEAD>

Because of this, the Title is one of the most important elements on a page.

When it comes to the order of the text, I’ve found that the following works well for your Title:

Service or Products | Site or company name

For a builder in Stevenage come to Lee Construction.

Whatever you do, don’t use the same title text for all documents. Doing so will make it much harder for search engines, people browsing through search results, and site visitors to quickly find out what the document is about.

Basics of search engine optimisation

I’m often contacted by Customerstreet clients asking for practical advice and help regarding search engine positioning optimisation (how to make your website appear more attractive to the search engines and to help to improve it’s position in the search engine results).

Over the years I’ve worked on many large web sites and I’d like to share what I have done to achieve very good search engine rankings for many sites over the years.

Let’s start with the truth – no one can guarantee the number one position on the search engines – not on Google, not on Yahoo or Microsoft Live. It’s up to the search engines to decide whether a site is relevant enough for a search to be the number one choice.

What you can do however is make your site more accessible to the search engines and to your visitors, improving your chances of being found for different keywords.

The guidelines I’m describing here are a basic level of search engine optimisation – they are what every single website should have (but sadly very few do).

If you have a website try these guidelines first, and if you’re still not getting the results you want, you may want to look into getting more help.