The subject of search engines can be sensitive to site developers and owners alike. Site owners naturally perceive a high ranking within search engines to be an integral part of successfully marketing a website. However search engine operators offer a free service and as such do not guarantee the placement of a site and its pages onto their own databases.
Apollo applies current techniques for SEO using knowledge gained and industry specific SEO tools. From regular testing of different approaches to SEO techniques, Apollo has a comprehensive understanding of how to get your website to the required level of visibility.
The SEO service is broken down into the following areas:
Web Code Validation
Validation can help ensure web pages have cross browser accessibility. Many Apple Mac users use Safari as their Internet browser, whilst Mozilla Firefox is becoming increasingly popular and of course Internet Explorer. Ensuring all pages are validated also keeps search engine indexing crawlers happy. If the crawler finds badly written code, it could stop indexing as it will presume that the website is still in development.
Key Word Analysis
When a search is carried out through a search engine, the user inputs a phrase containing relevant words. The search engine breaks down the search phrase and looks against its database of indexed web pages for comparable results. These are called ?Key Words? and are assigned to web pages by the site owner or site developer. The choice of keywords is very important and analysis of the most common search phrases people use when searching enables the best choice of keywords to use.
Page Content
Page content is the information that a visitor would read from the page. Each page should contain at least 200 words. This text should include the most important keyword phrases, but should remain logical & readable. Also, it should include the phrases that are used in other tags (i.e. metas, alt, headings, title, etc.) during the optimisation process.
Meta Tags
Meta Tags are used to provide information that is relevant to browsers or search engines by describing the content of your document. Some search engines use the name and content attributes of the meta tag to index pages. However, since too many webmasters have used meta tags for spamming, like repeating keywords to give pages a higher ranking, many major search engines have stopped using them entirely. The Keywords Meta Tag should not exceed 1024 characters including spaces. The Description Meta Tag should not exceed 250 characters including spaces. Meta tags should accurately describe the content of the page while trying to entice visitors to click on the listing. Add the most important keywords at the beginning of the description and only use keyword phrases that are used in the copy of the page, title tag, meta description, and other tags. Also, include specific geographic locations.
Title Tag
Many search engines and directories place a high level of importance on keywords that are found in the title tag. The title tag is also what the search engines use for the title of a listing in the search results. The title tag, including spaces, should be between 50-80 characters long and include 1-2 of your most important keyword phrases. If only keywords are listed, there is a risk of being viewed as spamming the engines, which can ultimately lead to the site being blacklisted by the search engines. The title tag should include keyword phrases while remaining as close to a readable sentence as possible, that makes the surfer want to clickthrough and visit the site. Each page of the site should have a unique title tag with it's own keywords that relate to the content.
Heading Tags
HTML heading tags can help improve listings in the search engines. They should include the most important keyword phrases, as some search engines use them in the analysis of page content.
Image ALT Tags
The ALT attribute is used to define an "alternate text" for an image and tells the reader what is missing on a page if the browser can't load images. The browser will then display the alternate text instead of the image. It is a good practice to include the "alt" attribute for each image on a page, to improve the display and usefulness of your document for people who have text-only browsers.
Text Hyperlinks
Search engines use complex algorithms to see what is linked to from a site is related to the content of the page. Some engines look for keywords in hyperlinks and in the surrounding text of the hyperlinks. Therefore, links should include the most important keyword phrases and possibly the surrounding text.
Sitemap
Sitemaps are a useful means for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata, so that search engines can crawl the site more productively.
Web Crawler Configuration
This involves assessment of the website areas that search engine crawlers are allowed to access. To ensure search engine crawlers are accessing the correct areas of the website, the website is configured to ensure search engines are indexing all relevant information.
Web Promotion
Search Engines encourage website owners to display other relevant website addresses on their website, known as a referral. Websites with reciprocal links are deemed as relevant to the search engines.
New Content Generation
Websites that have regular content updates have an enhanced chance of gaining higher rankings through search engines. A website with updated content can be perceived by search engines to have relevant information which is more up to date.
