Rocketfish: Search Engine Marketing

The code and structure of your website is massively important as it is this code that the search engine spiders use to determine how relevant your site is to the search term queried. Search engines basically function by sending their spiders out to look for text that relates to a search query. Search Engine Optimisation is basically the process of manipulating a website to ensure that each page on your site is focused towards a particular topic that your company specialises in, so that search engine spiders can easily identify what the page is about.

When the search engine spiders are sent to read a website they have a matter of seconds in which to do so. Should they be unable to read the code and thus have difficulties mapping out the information when their visit, they simply stop looking at your site and move onto another. The easier we make it for the spiders to find and read the information we want to show them the more chance you have to ensure that your site pages have the most achievable listings within the search engine indexes.

For this reason Rocketfish Ltd carry out a series of measures for restructuring site pages, within a number of areas of the page coding, as part of the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) process. One of the first changes we will make is to include your target key phrases in the meta-data area. It is good SEO practice to ensure that the meta-data matches the content on the page in question to form a relevant trail for, the spiders to follow.

• Ensuring that pages can and will be indexed - this involves making it easy for search engines to find your pages by implementing a sitemap, (an XML sitemap is preferred, since spiders look for this in particular). A robots.txt file is also something that search engine spiders look for - this tells them which areas of your site they are allowed to visit and cache. By verifying your site with Google and Yahoo!, this also aids them in identifying the components of your site.
• Clean site code - the less code that search engine spiders have to wade through, the easier it is to find your searchable text, so it is often necessary to reduce the coding to make it cleaner and more navigable.
• Body text content - The body text content refers to the main area for your text content to be found, and needs to be oriented around your target key phrases for that page, with the correct layout, well written content and useful relevant headings.
• Navigational links and page inter-linking - using key phrases within the text and navigational areas again allows search engine spiders to visit and identify the focus of pages within your site.