Search Engine Optimisation

Search engines work by providing a list of web pages that they consider relevant to the search phrase or keywords that somebody has typed in to a search field. There is enormous competition for returns on search engines and consistently good results are very difficult to achieve. Hence many tricks are used to cheat them and achieve artificially inflated rankings. NOT A GOOD IDEA!

Search engines are becoming increasingly "wise" to such tricks. If the search engine "thinks" it is being cheated it may drop your web pages from its index.

A search engine wants to deliver well-designed, "real" web pages full of interesting information to its users. Meaningless pages loaded with excessive repetitions of a keyword may bring short-term results, but sooner or later this strategy will backfire.

  • A search engine wants real HTML pages. They do not like pages that are obviously "machine-generated". A search engine wants these pages to be left permanently on the server, not moved around, or missing some of the time.
  • A search engine wants all of the pages on a web site to have links leading to them. They do not want "orphaned" pages, which are one-way entry only "doorway" pages.

There are other "tricks of the trade" which should be avoided:

  • So called "guaranteed No.1 positioning" (… for obscure, long keyword phrases which no one is ever likely to enter in a search engine)
  • Hiding keywords within the HTML code (e.g. by use of the <!--comments--> tags or via "invisible" text where the text is set to be the same colour as the background.)
  • "Free-for-all" link popularity schemes which often only result in meaningless clutter on the Internet.
  • "Shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects.
  • "IP cloaking" which delivers a different page to a search engine from the one users actually see.

To provide the search engines and your potential customers with what they want, just be honest! Build your pages and give them a Title, Keywords and Description which relates to the content. Our TCS Content Management System has all the tools you need to do the job properly.

In order to help our customers learn some more about Search Engines and how to submit their web sites to Search Engines we have prepared a small mini-site with links to Submission Tools, please Click Here.