The whole point of working hard to create an elaborate, potentially successful website is attracting as many visitors as possible. For that to happen, the website must be highly visible to anyone searching for information, products or services similar to the ones it provides, by entering keywords into search engines, as most people tend to rely on the highest rated search results. That better visibility can be achieved in a number of ways, such as the back door option (paid listings), deceptive techniques (which never provide long lasting results) or search engine optimisation, also known as a path to organic or natural listings.
One of the main methods of carrying out search engine optimisation is positioning relevant keywords within the website’s content and HTML, so that search engines can pick them up and your website comes up among the first listed when those keywords are entered by visitors seeking certain services (for instance ‘web design Cardiff’ or ‘web design Wales’). In order to increase one’s success rate, these keywords must be carefully selected in concordance with the most frequent searches on search engines, which use programs referred to as ‘crawlers’ or ‘automatic indexers’ for this process. Therefore, they must be keywords which generate high traffic at that point in time.
This process is continuous and for that reason refreshing the content periodically and adding new keywords is also important. You can also use keyword research tools for this purpose (programs helping you determine which keywords bring more traffic). A number of such tools are available, some of which are free and some coming at a charge, yet presumably more efficient than the free ones.
Another method used is cross linking, consisting of placing links on the pages of a website leading to other pages of the same website, primarily the front page or other highly relevant ones, making it easier for visitors to navigate through that particular website as well as assuring more clicks and visits to certain pages. Moreover, placing links to your website on highly trusted websites (the ones ranking higher on the main search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing) will lead to your website ranking higher as well, by drawing more credibility to it. It is advisable to place links on as many relevant websites as possible in order to increase the visibility of your own. It is also worth mentioning that searches are performed on more than keywords, as people often search for images or videos as well.
There are also processes known as ‘local searches’, which refer to any data sought on a local level, within a broader or more restricted range (using location-oriented keywords such as SEO UK, SEO Wales or SEO Cardiff). An aspect some website owners ignore is the page load speed, which is now one of the main criteria some search engines use (such as Google) when indexing and rating your website. Therefore it is advisable to fid a fast hosting company for your website, in order to ensure positive results.