There’s not much point in having a website if nobody can find it.
So what can you do to improve your chances of being “indexed” by the search engines?
How can you get your site to appear in the search engines when someone does a search for a particular phrase?
There are no magical solutions, but if you take into account how search engines “view” your site you can certainly make improvements.
Seo tools
All sites hosted on our linux servers now have access to some free SEO (search engine marketing) tools directly from within your control panel.
Text is your friend
Although Google et al may be able to index most content these days plain text is always easier.
If you can include the keywords and phrases you are interested in promoting in your site’s text in a natural and readable manner it will help.
Page titles
Make sure that every page has a unique and descriptive title.
Avoid Frames
Using frames in your website is a bad idea. It makes it very hard for a search engine to index your content.
If you want to preserve the effect of frames you can use other methods
Include a sitemap
If you have a page on your site with links to every other page on your site it can help indexing.
Use descriptive filenames
Instead of calling your files 123.php or page12.html (or something similar) use a descriptive name which reflects their content. For example if you sell bicycle parts then a product page might be better called bicycle-spare-parts.html instead of products.html
Keep your site content fresh
Fresh content is always a good thing and search engine spiders love it, so keeping your site up to date will help.
Get your site listed
Get your site listed in relevant directories and resource sites.
If you are targetting the Irish market, for example, you could submit your site to search.ie or browse.ie (or both)
Swapping Links
Swapping links with other webmasters can help build up both traffic and inbound links, however do not use automated software to request links, as this may be considered as spam.
Useful Resources
Seo Cookbook – blog about search engines and search engine marketing
SelfPromotion – DIY search engine promotion resource offering submission service
Irish webmaster forum – forum