Search Engine Optimisation - Optimization in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth by leading SEO industry pioneer, John Leach.

Alert to XP users 10 June 08.
In early May Microsoft released Service Pack 3 for the Windows XP Operating System.
If you have not already downloaded SP3 we advise you not to.
XP allows HTML emails to be sent as a default setting. This means you can embody images etc in the actual email rather than the recipient having to open a separate attachment.
We have been made aware that the HTML is being stripped from HTML emails and it is our advice that you not include images etc embodied in the email but rather send them as an attachment to the email.
The problem seems more critical with networked computers from our observation.
In addition there appears to be problems with SP3 working with some media software and SP3 causing machines to continually reboot at start up.
Be very cautious if you endeavour to uninstal SP3 to reinstal SP2 because you may remove shared files from your operating system.
We don't take any responsibility for this advice which you should verify for yourself prior to taking any action.


Designing a high ranking Website.
When designing your web pages remember that your site’s Visitors have one goal – to find what you have to offer them and to access the information as quickly as possible.

The overall objective of Search Engine Optimisation is to take searchers targeting specific words, or phrases, to your website. To achieve this goal the website must appeal to both your searcher, and the search engine, and a high ranking web position leads to more traffic, more visitors, more enquiries and hopefully increased sales for your business provided your site has been designed with conversion in mind – more about conversion follows.

Build it once and Build it properly
Build it and they will come - wrong.
Build it so they can find it - and they will come.

Seek our ethical Search Engine Optimisation advice before you start to design your web site or re-design an existing website.

To see examples of optimised Web sites that retain top web positions visit our ranking report Why Website builders use us

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Why sites rank well - The real test of a website’s ability to be found, is to search for the product or service the business offers, combined with its geographical location rather than retrieving the site by typing the URL into the address bar or searching for the business by the “business name”.

A keyword search that retrieves the actual website for the business is called a Direct Hit which is recognisable by “the URL” for the business which is located immediately under the site’s description (in most search engines and directories).

Website’s search results retrieved may include your business name in industry sites and industry directories or in news articles about your business but in order for your business to attract your unique visitor your customer must have a direct hit on your website – www.”yourbusiness”.com.au.

Don’t be contented if your site is easily found by keyword and keyword phrase searches by searching for rarely used and uncommon search words you have in text on your webpage if that phrase or those keywords would not be used by your potential customers to find your website.

Content is king is a commonly used phrase in SEO however we would add meaningful to that phrase.

Improve your Website’s visibility and increase traffic through ethical website optimisation - be among consistently top ranking websites - see our report How your site ranking can be improved

Don’t be tempted to design your site to appeal to one particular search engine or directory. This once popular SEO technique went out with button up boots.

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Choose a URL – Because your web address/URL (Uniform Resource Locater), can be critical for search engines and directories in indexing your site you should have an SEO Professional’s input before you register what you think is the best URL.

You may be tempted to take up an offer for cheap, short term, Domain registration however research shows that the search engines may not be indexing what they see as "temporary" Domains. Our advice is to register your Domain name for the maximum period possible.

You should incorporate keywords your customers would use to find your business. If necessary formulate a new business name incorporating those words for this specific purpose and register the business name.

Do not order stationery with your new Web address until you are confident it is in your name. To check on the availability of your proposed URL visit our useful links page.

A URL that contains letters that run together, such as vva, (which is the site for the Vietnam Veterans Assn) can be confused by anyone copying the URL manually as wa making it impossible for the site to be retrieved. The URL therefore should have either a hyphen or . between the characters.
Similarly any Web address containing r+n can be read as an m.
As you may be aware no spaces are permitted in a Website address which is why hyphens and fullstops are inserted between words but we caution you about using an underscore between words. The underscore is camouflaged by the line under the address and when copied manually it would be copied as a space.
These comments equally apply to email addresses.

Certainly URLs containing a question mark or equal sign will stop the spider dead in its tracks and no spider = no ranking!!. URL’s that contain a query string as dynamically linked pages do, are bad news for most search engine spiders because their robot can become trapped (spider trap).

Search engines are aware that their bot can be caught for hours in spidering a dynamic URL and for this reason they instruct their bots to avoid dynamic pages.

Dynamic URL’s are pages generated at the time of retrieval as distinct to the static web page URL’s as are stored on your server. An example of a dynamically generated page would be a page querying availability of rooms in a hotel or the availability of stock to fill an order and while mod_write pages can in part overcome the problem, our advice is to avoid or minimise dynamic pages and certainly never include query strings in the Home page (also termed main, entry or index page).

Search engines are becoming increasingly smarter and in time dynamic URL’s will doubtless be able to be spidered but at this time, if high ranking is important for your business, you would do well to heed our advice.

Length of URL Theory has it that short URLs are more inclined to help a site rank well because search engine robots have a tendency to regard longer URLs as belonging to the inside pages as distinct to the main/home/index page. Reasonable evidence suggests that a URL of 60 characters or more may not be spidered by some search engines so the object is to have a URL as short as possible but long enough to include the most important keyword/s. (Shorter URLs are also easier to remember).

If your business is selling only to Australian customers or to customers in your own country, then you are best advised to have an Australian domain name – that is ending in .au or the registry for your country.

If you elect to have a US registry website (ending only with .com as distinct to .com.au for an Australian commercial web address) remember there are search engines in Australia that will only index .com.au sites.

While .net domains and others can be chosen we recommend sticking with the .com.au as the norm for Australian (commercial) websites. As the most common it easier for recall than the less common domain name endings.

Most credible URL is yourbusiness.com.au * - If you decide to use a URL that ties you to a particular provider remember that the URL will be on your stationery and advertising etc.

Having to change it if you decide to move from that provider your URL becomes obsolete.

You are better advised to have your own URL, although it can be marginally more costly but it is worth every penny.

There are search engines that refuse to index sites that do not have their own URL.

Your own URL also gives your business more credibility – you could compare it to having your business name boldly displayed on the front of your building as compared to it being on the Tenant’s Directory board in the lobby.

*Your URL may be “Your Business Name” If the name is well known but if it is not a well known name we advise that you use major keywords instead of the business name.

EG Tom Brown sells computers in Sydney – he is not well known so instead of tombrown.com.au we would suggest he use computers-sydney.com.au.or similar.

If your URL is your business name but it does not include the product or service keyword that searchers may use to help them find your Website, consider introducing an important keyword into your various inside pages URLs.

For example www.creativeking.com.au sells bar stools but their business name makes no mention of the products they sell. We have used www.creativeking.com.au/bar.stools.htm instead of www.creativeking.com.au/products.htm which help searchers to find the site.
Another example would be an accountancy firm - instead of /services.htm we would suggest /accountancy.services.htm

Optimising your inside pages following the above examples will greatly assist your site to be found.

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Decide how many webpages you want in your site by focussing on the different topics to be covered – this will determine the number of navigation links to your inside pages. You may gain some knowledge from looking at your competitor's sites for the various headings they have used.

The average visitor to a website will look at 1.5 pages in total before they leave the site so make it as simple a task as possible for them to find what they are seeking.

If you decide on an About Us page remember its content may be of great interest to you but your visitors, who really don’t need to know your life history, or that of your colleagues, beyond creating reasonable credibility, won’t be much interested.
Your site visitor wants to know how you can help them - so better to avoid the ego trip.

The internal pages on your site should be designed and optimised as “landing pages” to take Visitors to those specific pages if the content contains keywords or phrases that they have searched. In developing landing pages you risk having your site penalised if the page content is not unique and the HTML META tags spam the search engines.

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Keywords selection - Critical in the design of all Web sites. A recent report titled "How Consumers Find Websites", by leading IT researcher, Forrester Research revealed 71% of first time Visitors to Web sites found them through a keyword or keyword phrase search.

Ask staff, colleagues and friends which words or phrase they would use to search for the business and more importantly ask your Customers which keyword phrase they would search to find you.

More often than not you will all arrive at dozens of words, each word regarded as “important” – the object is to finish with the most important focussed list possible. We aren’t suggesting you copy your competitor's websites but you will find useful keywords if you, and your helpers, visit those websites.

The list should be prioritised and always defining your target audience – those from whom you would expect business. Perhaps a ranking of words out of 20 points will assist in preparing the lists.

It is helpful to establish a list of keywords that belong to the individual Web pages that you have decided to use so if you do this initially then your task will be more simple. If this sounds too daunting then simply commence with a keyword list and the rest will fall into place with a little organisation.

Conduct a brain storming session once your lists are finished and determine how the important “keywords” would be used in a phrase. Rather than a single word, most searchers use a 2 or 3 word phrase to narrow their search and generally include a specific geographical location. An example would be - sporting trophies queensland.

If your business is Australia wide then Australia would be part of the phrase but if your current business is only trading in a designated region or state then it may be unlikely your Website will generate business countrywide.

If you believe you can develop business outside your present trade area, by all means use a broader geographical parameter. However in doing so your site will lose its ability to be found as easily by your potential core customers so being over ambitious to grow will detract from your present business as far as hits and visitors to your website are concerned.

Our experiences are that often in a brain storming meeting, staff will agree with management on the basis that “the boss is always right” but try to fully involve your helpers and give them every opportunity to voice their feelings rather than scowling if they don’t agree with your opinions – you did after all ask for their input. The session will not be effective if it develops into a battle of wills!

Don’t discard the less important words because they can probably be used in the body of your text in your professionally written web pages.

Perhaps use a Thesaurus** to check on similar words to those you will have considered and an equally valuable reference is the Reader's Digest Reverse Dictionary.
** Your Word O/S contains a thesaurus - to find the synonym simply click anywhere on the actual word you want a synonym for and press Shift+F7.

If you are to be the Webmaster for the site you will find that the words you have decided upon will not necessarilly be the words that searchers use so be prepared, as you fine tune your site, to substitute similar words to the keywords you have chosen.

Because of the similarity of words you have chosen initially you should not have any difficulty in replacing those keywords in your text with new keywords as and when you see the need.

In rebuilding an existing Website in order that you, and your helpers, don’t taint their thoughts at the outset, compile your keywords and phrases prior to referring to the current site. Then revisit your current site to pick up any major keywords or phrases you may have overlooked.
Remember that your opposition Websites contain much of what you will want so there is no need to reinvent the wheel but we are not suggesting that you copy anothers Web site.
There is an excellent tool on our Useful links page that examines whether a site has had text copied.

Use plural as well as singular words. An ordinary search (not advanced) will pick up the singular words from the plural but not visa versa.

It is apparent that the search engines are becoming increasingly smarter in their ability to pick up derivatives of words by providing search results from the stem word.

This "stemming" will retrieve results for the singular word when a plural is searched as well as plural for singular as well as other derivatives of search words. As an example someone searching for sport should also retrieve the words sports and sporting.

Google commenced stemming in early December 03 in its massive Google Dance in which it altered its algorithms substantially (to the horror of many web site owners and Webmasters)

Eventually stemming may be the norm, removing this necessity, but meanwhile our advice is to continue to use plural instead of singular in your web page (and HTML or XHTML) but preferably use both along with the words derivatives.

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Content copywriting – All top ranking websites share a common design attribute – they have carefully selected keywords incorporated in professionally written text and HTML, or XHTML.

Kindly note that throughout this Website we have used HTML which in all cases can be substituted for XHTML.

HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML) is the “behind the scenes coding” on a website.

Hypertext meaning the ability to link from a web page to another web page within the Website, or to a link on the same page, or, to link to another Website and remember it is more desirable to use the <a href> tag.

A Hypertext link may also be used to send an email (mailto link). Because some site Visitor's browsers will not support the short cut link ability, (as most recent browsers do), it is suggested that the email link on the page be the actual email address rather than click here to email us. This enables site Visitors who are unable to use your email shortcut, to cut and paste the email address into their mail address box.

Markup meaning the "instructions" to the web browser as to how you want the page's text to appear.

Keywords are exactly that, "key words", and you had better get them right or you may never know what you are missing.

Keyword selection is not merely to provide appetising “spider food” to help improve website rankings, but more importantly the text must be of interest to the human reader and most importantly, have the ability to convert the visitor into a customer.

The over use of keywords within the HTML/XHTML especially by over enthusiastic web designers, or amateurs, is referred to as keyword stuffing* or spamming – call it what you wish but it can have a site penalised or at worst, disqualified!

*Be aware that you walk a fine line between having sufficient major keywords in both your HTML/XHTML and in your URL. Too few and you will effect your web site's ranking ability but too many can also result in poor ranking. There is some evidence that spamming the actual text on your pages may also result in a site being penalised.

Do not be tempted to write a short novel or continually add to your website other than fine tuning the grammar and keyword phrases. We understand you are passionate about your site but try to keep the copy relevant and as short as possible while incorporating the important keywords and keyword phrases.

You might like to use the valuable Google keyword research tool you can find on our Useful Links page.

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Visual Appearance – As a starting point if you have no idea as to what you want your site to look like, spend some time looking at other site’s webpages for ideas as to layout. At the same time, (if they are in your industry), note their various page categories, which should help you decide on your pages.

Some web pages are as exciting as stationary screen savers – if you can’t inspire your website visitors to further explore your web’s pages then your advertising expenditure would be more beneficially spent on promotion of the business elsewhere.

Your website is just another way of promoting your business products or services so the age old advertising principles apply equally to a website as to any other form of advertising – “AIDA”

* Attention – capture your potential customers attention and;
* Interest – retain their interest and;
* Desire – create their desire (to buy) and;
* Action – inspire them to act, which means conversion of your website visitor into a customer!

While a certain amount of eye candy (images) can take away the bland look of a webpage, too many images, particularly if they are at a high resolution, will slow the page loading time – while text loads almost instantly, graphics can take forever.

Images on your website should be no more than 72 d.p.i. (dots per inch and also known as pixels per inch or p.p.i) which is the default and maximum setting on most computer monitors. To have higher resolution images will merely take longer to load your web page and the image will be no clearer to your visitor on screen.

Images should be designed so they load in slices which will save loading time.

If you intend using your images in stationery then have your web page builder retain a file of those images at 300 d.p.i. or higher to give your printer. Your printer cannot work off images from your web page as they do not contain sufficient fine detail for printing.

Resolution is not the only factor to consider in page loading time. The colour depth of photographic images can contain millions of colours which are unnecessary to display a clear image on screen.

Using fewer colours by making similar colours in the image the same will dramatically speed loading time. Your software is capable of decreasing the colour depth and the size of the palette accordingly.

To make your webpage more attractive use a header, incorporating your logo.

Try breaking the text up with images, particularly within the top fold of the screen.

Intersperse the page evenly with other images to retain your visitor’s interest.

The appearance of your webpage is equally important to your site visitors as it is for the human editors at the directories.

Leave lines of space between paragraphs to open the text up which creates an easier reading page.

A more visually attractive page, if it also contains informative text, will assist in your submission and indexing acceptance into directories. (Directory listings supply search results for many search engines and your inclusion not only helps to be indexed in other search engines but also improves the site’s web ranking).

Remember that text in graphics is not visible to spiders and that keyword rich and professionally written text and in the right place on your page is the secret to obtain, and retain, high-ranking websites.

The images used in webpages should be given a brief and relevant description in the ALT tags (image alt attributes) that appears when you mouse-over the image for visitors who have images turned off and particularly visually impaired visitors using readers.

Describe the image with a few major keywords that accurately describe it. Don’t fall into the trap of keyword stuffing the tag because your website will be penalised as spiders are beginning to react adversely to this practice.

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Background and text colours – Your site should be easily read with marked contrast between the background colour and the text colour. The most common background colour sites use is white (with black text).
If you choose to use any other colour background use a strongly contrasting text colour.

Stick with the standard colours specified by the W3C for both background and text. We have a link to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Website on our useful links page for your further reading (as well as a link to their website validation to test Markup on your site).

Never use font that is the same colour as the background (hidden text) – this trick will see your site penalised, if not disqualified, because it has been used for less than lustrous content in webpages for a long time. (Don't confuse hidden text with hidden content which generally means that users must pay to see it).

Before you decide to have a background image on your webpages consider that intricate images add to your page loading time and can also make the information on your page more difficult to read.

Don’t use CAPITAL letters – Text using all capital letters, whether in the body of your pages or in the HTML Title tag or META Description tag is difficult to read and is regarded as the internet equivalent of SHOUTING.

Avoid tiny text – small text, as well as being hard to read and discourteous to Visitors, particularly those using small monitors, can be frowned on by search engines and directories. Remember the human editors at the directories may decide that your site is not worthy of inclusion if it is not readable, irrespective of its content.

You will read more about web friendly fonts toward the bottom of this page..

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Use Logo for instant recognition – Whether a large or growing business, a well-designed logo creates instant recognition and equally so on your web pages.
Remember that in order to have your web page load relatively quickly, the logo should be no more than 72 dots per inch (d.p.i.) because large images (in bytes) on websites are the major cause of slow loading pages.

In designing the webpages the logo should appear in the same position on every page as should the navigation bars – this is referred to as “universal navigation”, making it as easy as possible for your site’s visitors to find their way around your site and recognise each page instantly is paramount in good site design. Your site visitor should only need to learn how your site works once to be able to navigate their way around the site.

As with your other images have your logo ALT tag use a major keyword or keyword phrase visible on mouse over and not simply “logo”.

Avoid lumping different businesses into one Website.
Unless the businesses are inseparable and you never intend selling one of them avoid using the same Web address that combines different businesses.
Just as it is difficult to sell a business where the figures for that business cannot be disected because they have been combined with another business so to it is easier to sell a business with its own Website.
It is impossible to view site stats for each of the businesses and transferring the combined Web address is not possible.
If ever it is your intention, no matter how remote, to sell off a business then it should have its own URL from the outset.

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Navigation links to your webpages and email – it has been traditional to put navigation links that are in plain text (as distinct to graphic file buttons or bars navigation links) in blue text and underlined. Many designers remove the underlining or change the colour of the text in the link making it less obvious to visitors.

The traditional royal blue colour should not be used for any other text on your webpage, as users may consider the text to be a link.

Placement of navigation menu on your webpages – Users are more accustom to finding the navigation links to your site’s other pages either across the top of the page or down the left-hand side – rarely on the right side and never at the bottom of the page.

Usually the navigation links at the top of the page are in the form of an image (why - see note following) so to assist the search engines and site visitors to find your other linked pages it is a good idea to also have navigation links at the bottom of the pages which acts as insurance that the search engines will find and index your other web pages. For this reason instead of replicating the image links at the foot of your Web page, consider making the bottom links in plain text.

Why have image navigation at the top of your page instead of plain text links - because the robots read from left to right top to bottom and you don't want a description for your page saying HOME, ABOUT US, PRODUCTS, CONTACT US etc as we have all seen.

Plain text links make for easier navigation for your site visitors rather than having to return to the top of the page to navigate to your other pages and are particularly useful for visually impaired site visitors using readers where the Website designer has not put attributes for the ALT IMAGE on the navigation bar images. (ALT IMAGE attributes provide a description for images when you roll your mouse over them).

On a large Web site because of the number of links it is not possible to use navigation bars at the top of the Web page, or down the left side, for every page on the site so often such sites use drop-downs for links to other pages.
Theory has it that drop-down menus make it more difficult for the robots to find the linked pages which is another good reason to use plain text links at the foot of the page.
Where this is not feasible because of the sheer number of links then a site map is an essential part of efficient page design.

Remember that the plain text links at the bottom of your pages should be in traditional blue and underlined.

Stop visitors reopening the same page - It is good practice to design your navigation links to change colour once used. For text links this is usually to traditional violet. To stop visitors reopening the page they are visiting make the link for the page being visited inactive so your visitors are not frustrated reopening the same page.

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Linking to other Websites – Your Website will rank higher if you have reciprocal links to (preferably synergistic) websites enabling visitors, as well as the search engine spiders, to easily visit your site from other websites.

Why reciprocal link? – Because a “link in” is more valuable in the algorithms used by the search engines than a link out. When the search engine robots visit a page with a link they follow that link to the other Website. This means that they are more inclined to locate your Website on a more frequent basis than normal spidering and that can only help with your rankings.

It is not always possible to swap links, especially with government sites (or large corporations), however linking to them can provide your visitor with great information and with the likelihood that they will bookmark your website (make a favourite) to revisit again.

It is good practice to have a “Useful Links” page rather than intersperse your pages with links, which can see site visitors become side tracked and leave your site prematurely. Your links page should be toward the end of your navigation menu so hopefully your site visitor gets to see your other web pages before moving on.

It is courteous to contact the Webmaster of sites you want to link to and request consent. That contact is also a great opportunity to request that they provide a reciprocal link to your site.

Rather than ask that reciprocating Websites link only to your main/index/home page, ask that some incoming links be to your other pages.

With links, the more you have is not necessarily better. The popularity of the link to you is principally judged on the site traffic it enjoys and a poor ranking site linked to yours can do more harm than good.

As your site starts to gain ranking after site optimisation you will receive many requests to give other sites a link – don’t commit yourself until you check the quality of the other site and its ranking for commonly used search words and phrases.

To research possible reciprocal links perform a link analysis of high-ranking sites in your industry found by common search phrases or keywords. Pick the best of their incoming links, view the sites and choose the best non-competing sites to approach. Synergy is the key so your reciprocal links must be carefully considered.

Before you agree to link to another site check further to determine that it doesn’t direct your customers to a competitors webpage. You have generated the visitor so let your competitors find their own visitors, and not “steal” yours.

If you can’t retrieve a site you have linked to, remove the link because your site will be penalised for having broken links.
A broken link can occur through a URL being changed, or perhaps the website has been taken down, so your site’s links need to be regularly checked.

Hyperlinks throughout the site must function correctly in order for search engines (and Visitors!) to “find” your destination page. If the search engine can’t access the linked page, the page does not exist, which doesn’t help your ranking.

It is good practice to make external links open in a new screen rather than taking over your Website. To achieve this is simple, you simply add target="_blank" after the address. So an example of a Website that will open in a new screen looks like this <a href="http://www.google.com"target="_blank">

If you design your links to open in a separate screen it is good practice to tell your site visitor - The following links will open in a new screen.

Avoid using JavaScript links, which are not compatible with all browsers, but instead use true hyperlinks throughout your site.

If JavaScript links are used they should be in a separate file but it is preferable to use the traditional <a href> tag for links instead.

You may be requested to provide your reciprocal link through placing their business’s logo on your webpage.

While their logo can be made a link just as easily as their URL, remember it is an image and it will take longer to load the page than a plain text link so keep the bytes down.

The Useful Links page is the most likely page to suffer broken links because of the sheer number of links from that page so it should probably be tested more often than your other webpages for broken links.

As a courtesy to those sites that link to you remember that if you change your Web address, to advise them so they can alter their link to your new URL, failing which they might remove their link to your website because it is broken and can be detrimental to their own website.

If your business sells products for a supplier who a Website request they give you a reciprocal link. If they don’t have a links page you might suggest they start one.

Avoid link farms - the search engines, and in particular Google, will likely penalise your Web site if they see that a number of inbound links are originating from a single Internet Protocol range. This may have worked once but don't go there.

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Considering a foreign language translation – With most websites we suggest don’t bother.

Our studies indicate nearly all visitors to Websites, for which we act as Webmaster, use English, despite the fact that they search in a foreign language search engine.

If you decide a foreign language webpage is necessary use a human translator rather than using the foreign language translation tools, which are capable of misinterpreting your content, and can on occasions be quite embarrassing.

A multi-lingual site can be an absolute nightmare to maintain.

Link to a Global Currency Converter - If your are trading internationally you might consider putting a Currency Converter on your site’s most suitable webpage, which would probably be your rates page or price list if you had such a page.

The currency converter from XE is free and we have provided a link to it from our Links page.

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HTML and META tags – Hypertext markup language is the coding behind the site that can make or break a website. The information between the <head> and the </head> tag does not necessarily appear to your site Visitor but it is crucial in the site’s efficiency so far as the browsers are concerned. It includes the Title tag that determines, in search engines, and directories, how your site is described in their results (except for Yahoo! where the editors write their own Title, particularly if they find your Title long and cumbersome) and has a major impact on the site’s ability to achieve high ranking.

Poorly written HTML or simply a slip up in leaving an opening < or closing tag > from the coding can result in a Website being lost in cyber-space.

Equally important as the text you have written for your pages, are the Title tags and META Description tags, and (to a far lesser degree now than in the past) the META Keywords are often abused, through either ignorance, or lack of attention to detail.

Symbols and characters used in your HTML (or XHTML) must be written with a character reference rather than the actual symbol.

In viewing HTML in a web page many Websites are seen to contain errors through non-compliant references, ie the symbol instead of the entity reference or character reference has been used.

Here are some of the more commonly used character references: We have placed a space after the ampersand symbol (&) but no spaces should be used in the actual character reference.
& amp; Ampersand sign
& cent; Cent sign
& pound; Pound sterling sign
& euro; Euro sign
& copy; Copyright sign
& lsquo; Left single quote
& rsquo; Right single quote
& ldquo; Left double quote
& rdquo; Right double quote
& laquo; Left angle quote
& raquo; Right angle quote
& mdash; Em dash
& ndash; En dash
& reg; Registered trademark
& trade; Trademark sign
& deg; Degree sign
& plusmn; Plus or minus
& frac14; One quarter
& frac12; One half
& frac34; Three quarters
& times; Multiplication sign
& divide; Division sign
& alpha; Greek letter alpha
& beta; Greek letter beta
& infin; Infinity symbol

For a full list of character entities visit the w3org link on our Useful Links page.

Among other uses the META content should inform the browsers to use charactersets (CHARSET) for unusual characters like Chinese or Japanese.
Many websites omit the CHARSET as well as the DCD DOCTYPE, a requirement of the W3C.

As the www develops XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) will eventually overtake HTML.

The main difference between HTML and XHTML is that XHTML uses all lowercase letters in the META Keywords tag whereas HTML can be a combination of both or either Upper or Lowercase.

In HTML code the use of quotation marks on either end of the attributes is generally optional but there are exceptions where they are mandatory whereas in XHTML quotation marks around attributes is essential.

HTML is more forgiving of sloppy coders who do not nest their tag pairs correctly.
The tag being the instruction to the browser (which is surrounded by the < and > brackets).

The order of those tags must be a mirror reverse meaning first in last out.

While more innovative, XHTML will prove a real <head> ache for coders because it is far less forgiving if closing tags (including those that are not now needed like </META>) are omitted.
XHTML in order to offer most benefit, the pages should be sent as application/xhtml+xml but as such they are not compatible with MS Internet Explorer browser version 6, so maybe HTML could stay around for some time to come.

The Title tag (which appears at the top left of your screen to your searchers and in search results) must be readable to both humans and also to robots. They should not be stuffed with keywords to help your ranking which if overused will see your site penalised.

Remember that even if your site is in top ranking position that your potential Visitors may skip to the sites below yours if those sites have a more appealing description instead of a collection of gobbledygook and jumbled meaningless words.

Similarly the META Description tag should be a carrot to your potential Visitor to enter your website.

The Title tag should not contain “filler” words (except for coherent readability) like a, and, the because search engines, other than in an advanced search, will ignore such common words.

Don’t waste space in your META Title tag with words like ”Welcome to our Website” or “Home page” – they do nothing but take up valuable space. See examples of correctly written META Titles on our ranking report you be the judge

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Website loading time – No matter how highly ranked and easy to find (in search engines and directories) your site is it will not generate business if it takes an Act of Parliament to open the page and your potential Visitors become impatient and move off your site.

Your main page should load rapidly and if your inside pages take a little longer to load it is not as critical because once your visitor arrives and provided your main page catches, and *retains, their attention they will be more likely to wait for other pages to load**.
*A website that retains the Visitors attention is referred to as a “sticky” site.

**If your site is optimised using “doorway pages” you really don’t know which page your Visitor may arrive through so it is best to keep all your pages fast loading and not only your Index/Main/Home page.

Testing the site at 28.8 k.b.p.s. (Kilobytes per second) modem speed as a measuring standard, the page should load in a maximum of 12 seconds but the shorter time it takes the better chance your visitor will stay with your site.

The most common reasons for slow loading pages are graphics that are not optimised or using Flash in the design but many other causes including height and width of images not included in the HTML will slow loading as the browser must decide what space to allocate for those images.

When you have visited a web page your computer will cache the site so it will load more rapidly next visit. Your computer may seem lightning fast in loading your web page but first time visitors to your site might have a different experience.

Also remember that if your site takes an age to load you are risking not being indexed by the search engines.

Whilst you may do everything possible to speed up loading time, if your Host server is not coping with the volume of traffic and slowing your site's loading time, you may consider changing Hosts.

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Contact details on every page – Many websites only have contact details on their contact page – consider putting that detail also on the Home/Index page if not at the bottom of all your pages.

The human editors at some directories will not index a site that does not provide an actual address (as distinct from a postal address) probably thinking that the business may operate out of the boot of a car. This may be so but give your site credibility with visitors and tell them where you are and make it simple for them to contact you.

This address detail should also include your Email address and telephone and fax numbers which should have the State area code, for interstate callers and if you are doing business outside your country, include your phone and fax numbers with the ISD code for those International callers.

As well as credibility, another reason to have your address on all web pages is that searchers generally include a geographical area or country to narrow their search. Having your address on pages helps search engines to retrieve your webpages when a place name is used in the search phrase.

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Why websites have low ranking or can’t be found –

Many website owners, designers or webmasters are in denial about their websites functionality and its ability to be retrieved by searchers.

Possibly they believe it is satisfactory to retrieve the site by its URL, which is fine provided they can afford to continually have the URL appear in advertising or possibly the business is so well known, as major airlines for example. Smaller business can not afford such luxury.

In order for the search engines and directories to index a website the site needs to be submitted to the engines and directories but the exercise is a waste of time for sites that are using flawed design and have not had the care of a Search Engine Optimisation specialist.

Site owners and/or webmasters who can not find their website would be better advised to fix the problems with the site instead of spamming the engines and directories by repeated submission.

Directory human editors especially take a dim view and may penalise (disqualify) websites guilty of spamming or worse, black list them.

A professionally optimised website will firstly achieve high ranking on search engines and due to the algorithms, (the mathematical formulae search engines use in determining site ranking which includes popularity), those sites will likely remain at top ranking position without continual submission to search engines.

If your web site can’t be found see how professional SEO services can improve your web ranking and give your website a top web position How to get more business from your Website

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Consider the spiders – The use of some relatively common website design technologies can see a website lost in cyber-space forever.

Any “turn-off” to the spiders must be avoided.

The most common problems that stop search engines, and directories indexing websites are: - Dynamic Pages, Frames, * irrespective of the no frames tag being used, (more on frames follows), Flash** and Splash pages, AJAX (which cannot be read by "readers" used by visually impaired site visitors and will likely see, in the USA particularly, a number of possible prosecutions of site owners as a result in the future), Password protected pages, JavaScript (not in external files), Animated gifs, Hidden text, Spamming, Cloaking, Over submission (especially to the human edited Directories), Broken links, Blinking text (as well as being a real no no for epileptic sufferers) and Text that is not “keyword” rich, and of course poorly written HTML, can prevent a website from ranking if it is indexed at all.

** Flash - On 4 July 08 Google announced that it was seriously altering its algorithms in order to spider flash sites. It is still our suggestion to avoid flash in the site's design until this becomes a 100% reality.

The use of mirror sites, ie duplicated content on 2 (or more) Web sites, can lead to both (or all sites) being disqualified by search engines. Car maker BMW found out the hard way in February 2006 when Google removed both of their Web sites from Google's index because they contained the same content.

BlackHat optimisation, as it has been termed, relates to unethical techniques used by Web designers to try to trick the Search Engines and Directories. If you think you can outsmart them then use every trick you can, however in time your site WILL suffer the consequences and rightly so.

Forcing site visitors to enable cookies will eliminate visitors to your website.

Pop ups screens on your web page might seem really cool but the search engines, including Google, ignore Web sites using pop ups.

* Frames have been a favourite of web designers for a long time. Recognisable by the framed information that can be scrolled while leaving the header and navigation bars static on the page, if used on the front page of a web site make it impossible to spider; no spidering = no indexing = no ranking! In order to work around this problem designers have come up with a no frames page however evidence is that frames are best not used when ranking and site findability are important. If your advertising budget permits advertising every day in many mediums promoting your web address and offering discount prices for say *airline tickets which must be booked on the net, then a Frameset designed website is probably fine to use but few other businesses have this luxury and need to be found easily by potential Customers using search words and phrases.
*Virgin Blue airline’s web site was using Frames at the time of writing. Qantas, and their new airline Australian Airlines, who previously used Frames have recently rebuilt their site in HTML. It is probably only pure coincidence that they redesigned their websites shortly after we contacted them after analysing both sites and pointing out the problems with their site’s design and consequent terrible ranking for major keyword phrase searches.

Another problem created by frames is the inability of Visitors to “bookmark” (in Netscape Navigator browsers) or make a page a “favourite” (in MSIE / Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers) to revisit your webpage in the future.

Music or background sounds might seem a really cool idea but remember they will add to page loading time.

Webpages over a 100 Kilobytes may be passed over by some search engine spiders. While there are no hard and fast rules as to the size of webpages, the smaller bytes size the better.

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Consider your site Visitors – Finding your Website near the top of search engines and directories is critical but equally you need to have a site description that entices the potential Visitor to want to view your web page and then to have it load quickly and without errors.

Large images (in bytes), or too many images on the page will slow loading time. There is no point having a great site if your visitor leaves before they open your page.

Various versions, and makes, of browsers can alter the appearance of your page. The site must be designed to be compatible with most browsers, especially the two most commonly used, Microsoft Internet Explorer, which has over 90% of the browser market, and Netscape Navigator and more so their more recent versions but don’t disregard Visitors with older browser versions.

In the worst case scenario a white background can be turned to black.
It is hard to imagine that the Coca Cola website suffered this problem at the time of writing. If it can happen with such a prominent site it is conceivable the same could happen to yours.

The webpage should be designed to display properly to Visitors who have different screen resolution settings – nothing is more annoying than having to scroll from left to right to read the page but most site visitors expect to scroll from the top to the bottom of a webpage.

What screen resolution should I design the site in?
As you view Webpages on your monitor you have probably wondered why some Websites require you to scroll from left to right to read the page.
The answer is because the Website has been designed in a higher resolution than you have set on your computer.

A few years ago 640 x 480 was the common screen resolution.
Currently 800 x 600 is the most common (in Australia as distinct to the US where higher resolutions - 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024 are commonly used).
This is why many US sites require you to scroll across the screen.

As time passes, and larger monitors become more common we will see more sites being designed in higher screen resolutions.

The advent of cable will also see more audio and video being used on Websites however at this time you should consider the dial up visitors to your site who probably won't have the patience to wait for your page to load and will leave your site, irrespective of what great content, sound, and eye candy it contains.

The use of non-standard colours, outside the guidelines laid down by the W3C, can cause your site to display vastly differently to your Visitors.

The use of uncommon Fonts might look great on your monitor but if non-standard fonts are used that aren’t installed in your Visitors computer, their text will revert to a default font (Times New Roman) and not what you designed for them to see.

Arial, Times New Roman and some forms of Courier, Verdana, Tahoma and Helvetica are the most common fonts with Arial and Tahoma probably being the most popular and the easiest to read.

Times New Roman is regarded as a little “old fashioned” however web pages designed for Legal firms or other professions that want to create a “conservative” looking web page may decide on Times New Roman.

Avoid “bolding” all text in your page which makes the page look “heavy”.

Consider using bold text at the beginning of paragraphs for the first word or three creates a bit more interest on your pages and especially if your business name or a major keyword or important phrase commences the paragraph.

Don’t mix different fonts on your Web pages, you will make them too hard to read. For the same reason avoid using a variety of font sizes and colours and indiscriminate bolding.

The technical aspects are very important however a Commercial Website, in order to provide a worthwhile return on investment, must be able to convert your site Visitor into a Customer. No matter how highly ranked your site is, it is useless unless it can generate additional business for you.

We pioneered the SEO industry – see examples of consistently high ranking websites How to get lots more Website visitors

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How deep should pages be?
Traditionally a web page should be no more than 4 “clicks” deep. If however the sheer volume of information on your pages makes them too deep, you may consider introducing additional pages to the site but then a large navigation menu can also be daunting for visitors.

There is a benefit to having more pages, which provide the opportunity to create additional “doorway pages” for your website and the plus of additional URLs and additional HTML Titles and META Description tags.

Rarely do single page websites enjoy high ranking in search engines. Our experience indicates that a site should be constructed with a minimum of 5 or 6 pages to enable the optimisation of inside webpages and improve the ranking capability on search engines.

The alternative to more pages, which we have used in this site, is to provide a precis of the inside page’s content on the main page, as a quick reference index, and to put a link from each index item to the relevant information contained. If you use this design you should also provide a Return to top of page link or a similarly worded short navigation direction immediately below the information to enable your Visitor to more easily navigate your site.

Don’t forget the links should be traditional blue and underlined to make them as obvious to your website Visitors as possible.

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Multiple Domain Names/URL’s/Web Addresses – Website owners redirecting multiple sites who believe that the more web addresses the better in creating traffic should rethink.

Search Engines are becoming hostile to redirects which they regard as spamming the engine (particularly Google).
There is nothing wrong having more than 1 website providing that the site(s) has unique content and doesn’t mirror another website.

If a redirect site is needed to replace an old web address permanently, then the website redirection must be at server level and a “redirect 301” put on the old site.

A “redirect 301” should enable the search engines in time to permanently replace the old URL with the new.

For whatever reason Yahoo! either ignore a 301 redirect or are very slow to embrace your wishes but we have observed that although Yahoo! don't retrieve the new web page, they do rank the old site URL well so the result is the same.

Whether you choose a 302 temporary redirect or a 301 permanent redirect, when deciding which page to link to on the "new" website, don't take the easy way out and link all redirected pages to the index page thus forcing visitors to navigate through your web pages. Link to pages with similar content. For example link the old home page to the new home page, the old contact page to the new contact page, the old links page to the new links page etc.

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Avoid dating your Web site - Statements in your web pages that will date your site should be avoided unless you are prepared to continually make corrections. Instead of saying “for 3 years” say “since whatever the year”

Last updated notice – if you insist on placing the date you last updated your site on your webpage be certain to change the date each update. Perceived out of date information is not what your visitor is looking for.

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Launching site “Under Construction”

Q. Should a site be launched while it is still “under construction”?

A. Short answer is NO.
We all know that a Website is considered “forever a work-in-progress” but there is a time when the site is probably as complete and polished as you believe it is going to be for a long time to come – then launch.
Launching a website “under construction” is taboo for many search engines, and especially Directories, as the keen eye of the Editors will ignore your unfinished work and not index it or regard it as complete and your site can end up with embarrassing Titles and META Description tags that can be difficult to have altered and you will wish you had heeded our advice.

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Your Website downtime – If your Website is down then neither Visitors, nor search engines, or directories, can retrieve your Webpages.

A “404 error” for site Visitors is unsatisfactory enough but if you are unlucky and have the “spider” drop by at that time, your site may be removed from their index until the next spidering. This could be catastrophic if it was the Google spider (“Googlebot”), and you had a high-ranking site in Google.

If you have repeated problems accessing your site because your host is unreliable, consider finding someone more reliable.

There is a web tool available from InternetSeer that will alert you, by email, at the time your site can’t be retrieved and also email you when it is again available. Their tool also provides a weekly report of any down time, the time it first went down and when it came back up. The InternetSeer report also advises the speed to connect.

Your site should be up 24/7 and generally downtime is not an issue of great concern but diligent Webmasters keep a watchful eye on it.

The actual design of your Website can now commence.
The "butcher paper" method is an easy method to design a Web site making it simple to visualise your site's layout.
Start with a large sheet of paper and working from the top, (your index page URL), and work through to the inside pages.

We were performing “SEO” before it was named – to see examples of what can be achieved How your Website traffic can be improved

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