Nov 07 - Keywords were all the rage - yesterday

Meta tags

When SiteWeave began designing web sites back in 1999, Google was barely a year old and its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin (pictured right) were based in a garage. Back then, meta tags were all the rage. These are simple pieces of hidden code that are built into a web page to tell search engines what the page is all about. Here is what one looks like:

<meta name="Keywords" content="widgets, doobries, cheap widgets, more widgets, etc. " />

Search robots

The trouble with meta tags is that they can lie. They might tell the search engine that the site is about widgets when really it is about scantily clad women. To get round this, search engines now use programs to analyse the content of the web site and then use this information to decide which search terms will display which web sites. These programs are called searchbots, robots, or spiders. Each major search engine will have its own software with names like Googlebot or Hotbot.

One hundred parameters

Google (let's face it, Google dominates the search market in the UK) uses 100 different parameters in assessing how to rank any particular site. Google keeps the intricacies of how it works a very close secret and this has lead to a whole industry of people trying to 'crack the code' and find out why Google ranks one site higher than another. One trouble is that these parameters can change:

The Google Dance

In an attempt to make its rankings fairer, and to outwit those search engine experts trying to manipulate those rankings, Google regularly changes its 'algorithms'. This can lead to great changes in who is near the top, and these changes have become known as 'The Google Dance'. Major Google Dance episodes are even given names such as 'Jagger' and 'Big Daddy'.

Don't use tricks

Don't use tricks to fool the major search engines because if you get found out you could be 'banished'. The BMW web site recently fell foul of this. We too have used tricks like 'gateway' pages' in the past but would now advise against it. There are tricks that do still work and one of our competitors uses one to very good effect at present but may suffer for it in time.

So what to do?

The difference between 'tricks' and fair search engine optimisation will always be a grey area but there are still many methods available to us to improve a site's ranking without jeopardising its long term position. One of the main ones that you can do yourself is to decide what search terms you would like to find a particular page and then make sure that those terms are used on that page. Web site professionals will have more detailed methods available but you can go a long way by making sure that the text content of your page reflects the searches that you are hoping to capture.

Service your site

Do you service your own car? Perhaps it may be cost effective to service your own web site. Keep it up to date and relevant with new content and follow the latest trends in search engine optimisation and user presentation. But our advice is, if your web site is a valuable tool for your business, have it serviced professionally and don't let it go out of date.