Better-designed sites, clearer and more popular sites are more likely to get better results from the search engines, i.e. be listed with a higher relevance and thus come out nearer to the top of results more often.

Our suggestion is to concentrate your efforts on adding lots of useful and relevant information to your site.

Remember too that search engines generally work by looking at the words on your page, and can't interpret things like frames, images or animations. So make sure your site contains a good helping of plain text that describes what you do or what your site is about.

If your site uses images for headings or navigation, make sure you provide alt text to provide context and meaningful information. This will not only help your search results, but is a requirement in current XHTML standards and highly recommended in any case to ensure your site is accessible by people with limited or no visual ability.

At the same time, don't overdo it with the text. Too much repetition or trying to fake your way to the top of the search engines by overloading your site with keywords nearly always leads to your site disappearing from the search engines altogether.

Similarly, don't try to trick search engines by putting irrelevant keywords on your page. Search algorithims are awake to this and basically anything that is detectable as an inconsistency that appears designed to trick search engines is likely to work against you in the long run.

Last updated 07 Apr 2005

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