search engine optimisation
SEO and why I should give a damn

If your website is an extension of your business then you want to be found on the world wide web. Search engines like google, yahoo and msn etc can help potential clients find you. And that's exactly why you should give a damn.

So you're a SEO guru then?
Nope, not even close. If I was I'd own my own island in the pacific. But I've been doing this for long enough that I recognise good practises. The search engines are always changing the way they rank websites, and it seems there are a gazillion companies on the internet that will guarantee you number one spot in google. I'm not going to promise you number one, although some of my clients have reached this lofty goal. At the end of the day some of it's up to me, but a lot of it is down to you.

What do the search engines look for?
Depends on who you talk to. When you go to a website, say the BBC, you don't care about the way the pages have been constructed, how they have been named, that the pictures have the correct tags and that the pages are saved in a logical location.

You've got the mark I eyeball. You see something you are interested in and follow the links. Unfortunately search engines don't have this luxury. They see the webpage as text, tags and meta information. So SEO is definitely a black art, and 99% of the things I do when constructing your website make no decernable difference to the viewer of your website, unless they are a search engine.

What can I do?
To be perfectly honest, when I'm building an alpha version of your website not a lot. I'll be talking html markup and technical gobbeldegook nineteen to the dozen. I'll be saving your files in a logical layout. Take the pageyou are looking at now. www.bluemonsta.com/design/search-engine-optimisation.php. It's in the design section of my website and thats reflected in where the page has been saved. Search engines can see this and take note of it.

Also I'll make sure that the html heading tags h1, h2, h3 etc are used to markup your text, allowing the search engine to see the structure and importance of your content.

Photos, they say they are worth a thousand words. But not to a search engine unless the Alt tag is filled out correctly. These are just a small subset of what I do to a website to help your search engine rankings.

Content is King
It's no secret that search engines love text, they link to it, index and cross reference it every time they visit your website. So the quality of your content is probably the single most important thing on your website.
Note that I said quality and not quantity. Humans are not suited to reading reams of text on a computer screen so it's important to say exactly what you mean in a concise manner. Search engines also like to see your website change. If it doesn't your rankings will slowly fall. A simple trick is to reorder the text on your homepage regularly. Even just moving sentences around in paragraphs can help out.