Google Search Engine Optimisation

How to use SSIDM Studio to get your pages ranked higher in Google searches.

It's not possible to guarantee high search engine rankings but the Studio makes it easier to get the most from your pages. Firstly, a brief summary of the key ways to engine search engine placement:-

Links

The more links into your website from other sites the better and the bigger the site linking to you, the better. Contact suppliers, customers and other partner organisations and arrange for reciprocal links with their websites.

Keywords

Think of the keywords you want to attract. These should be the phrases that you would expect your visitors to search for but should also be as unique to your site as possible. If you just aim for single, generic terms you'll be competing with thousands of other sites.

Content

Your keywords need to relate to the content of the page. Google will look for the relevance of the key word(s) in the content of the page. Make the content as rich as possible using headings, links, images and well composed text.

Now, how to use the Studio to enhance a page's placement: -

Keywords and meta tags

When an SSIDM page is displayed in a browser, it will use the Page Title and Keywords properties for the page to set the Page Title and Meta Tags, as below: -

• The page title will consist of the Site Title (from Site Config) plus the Page Title (from Page Manager)
• The page keywords will consist of the Site Keywords (from Site Config) and the Page Keywords (from Page Manager)

So, make sure the page title is relevant to your chosen keywords and use the Keywords property to add your keywords. There's no need to use quotation marks - just separate each keyword or phrase with a comma.

Headings

Google will look particularly at the headings for a page. So make sure that you have text with a 'Heading' style on the page, preferably at the top, and make sure that the heading is relevant to the keyword(s)

Images

The alternative text attached to an image is a key factor for search engines as well as being important for accessibility. Make the alt text relevant and add a description to the image too. Also, make your image filenames relevant too, i.e. Blue Widget.jpg instead of Image004.jpg

Anchor Tags

This the term for the text you use for a link - the bit that is underlined and the visitor clicks on. Again, make sure that this is relevant to the keywords so

• more information on blue widgets

is better than

• click here for more information

How do I know if it's working?

Try searching for the keywords yourself. Also use Google Analytics to see which keywords visitors are using successfully and look at the content of those pages.