How to optimise your website

Pi's top 10 tips on "How to Optimise your website for search engines"

1. The Keywords tag - The first step is to choose the most suitable search terms for your site. Use keyword metatags to describe the words a visitor would use to find your site in a search engine like Google or Nine MSN.

2. The Description Tag a brief sentence description of the page. Some search engines also use the description to display a summary of the page.

3. Page Title Change tag to incorporate "Keywords" i.e. Search Engine Optimisation by Pi .

4. Insert Alt Tags on images to assist increasing the number of word matches to the search.

5. H tags are given more weight than ordinary text and, the bigger the H size, the more weight it receives. So include the target search term in H tags at least once on the page, and two or three times if possible. Also, place the first H tag as near to the top of the page as possible.

6. Bold text is given more weight than ordinary text but not as much as H tags. As much as is reasonable, enclose the search term in bold tags when it appears on the page.

7. Body Text: Include more keywords on the home page copy that describes to the visitor what your business does, think what words would a customer use to find you. Use the search term as often as you can on the page whilst not detracting from the page's readability. Make sure that you use the term once or twice very early in the page's body text and as often as possible throughout. Reword small parts, and even add sentences, to make sure that the search term is well represented in the text.

8. List your site in Google and DMOZ

9. Backlinks - Create Links to associated websites- inward and outbound from your site - The idea behind link popularity is that the more pages that link to a page, the more important the page is and it, therefore, deserves a higher ranking than it would otherwise have. It is not enough just to have a large number of backlinks, it is the quality of backlinks along with the quantity that help you rank better in Search Engines.

10. Make the site accessible for good search engine placement, as accessible sites are machine friendly, making it far easier for search engines to index the content. See our top 10 tips for accessibility.