Search Engine Optimisation
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Search engine ranking depends on a variety of factors; the best way to achieve a good ranking is to have many other (relevant) sites linking to yours - this is a good way to make sure that the search engine robots can easily find your site during their trawls of the web. However, there are also some fairly simple steps that can be taken when writing pages to make them easier for the robots to understand and index, and will make it more likely that the right information will show up in search results when surfers are fortunate enough to find your site in their searches.
Separate content from presentation
Keep your code simple and well structured, and avoid presentational html whenever possible. Use headings and paragraphs to order your pages logically, so that the robots can easily understand what each bit is for, and don’t have to wade through mountains of unneccessary code to find the essential content of your pages.
Use heading and title tags
Make sure that the <title> tag contains the name of your site, as well as a brief summary of the current page; it is the content of this tag which is displayed in search results, so it should be short but descriptive, so that it gives potential visitors a good idea of what that page is about. This also helps search engines to index the page accurately.
Many search engine robots also look for <h1> tags in the page, so the best strategy is to have a single level one heading, at least part of which should match the content of the <title> tag to ensure consistency and avoid confusing the bots.
Use meta tags
<meta> tags can be added to the <head> element of the page to provide additional information to search engines about the content of the page. Meta tags can be used to add keywords and a description.
You can specify keywords in a comma-separated list that can contain any words or short phrases relevant to that page. The list should be no longer than 250 characters (about 50 words). For example:
<meta name="keywords" content="training, web design, web design training, html, css, camden, mental health, work-based training, charity" />
Unfortunately, keywords have been abused so much in the past by unscrupulous authors cramming them with irrelevant words to get higher rankings that search engines now place very little weight on them. There's no harm in including them, provided that the words are relevant, but they probably won't make a huge amount of difference to your ranking.
A description is rather more useful, because it is this (if it is included) which appears in the search engine results underneath the title of your page. It should be short and descriptive, around 25 words, and ideally will contain content which is echoed on the page itself. For example:
<meta name="description" content="We are an innovative web design training programme based at St James's House, a registered charity offering support and work-based training for people with mental health issues" />
It’s worth creating meta tags for each page in your site, so that people can find the exact page that they need based on their search.
A word of warning
Don’t try to fool the robots by cramming your meta tags with irrelevant but popular searchwords, or soliciting links from irrelevant websites just to bump up your ranking. This may have worked a few years ago, but search engines are now wise to this, and your site may end up blacklisted as a result.
And a note on accessibility
The separation of content from presentation, and the meaningful use of title and heading tags, also makes your pages more accessible to disabled visitors using assistive technologies such as screen readers and text-only browsers, and broadens the availability of your site to other technologies that may be used to access it (such as handheld devices) which may not be as forgiving as traditional graphical browsers, helping to future-proof your site, as well as improving access in the here and now.
You can find a much more comprehensive guide to search engine optimisation at www.wordsinarow.com/seo.html.