More and more people are beginning to understand that search engines are unable to recognise graphics, images and flash files contained on a web page. Text is the only element of a web page that Google and other search engines can reliably index. Therefore ‘text is king’ and plays a huge part in the relevance and ranking of search results.

However, if you are struggling to create web pages that contain unique content, do not be tempted to copy sections from other parts of your site, as search engines will recognise this as duplicate content. Even worse, do not be tempted to produce an exact copy of your website, hosted on a different domain, in the hope that this will increase your chances of achieving a high ranking.

Why does Google care about Duplicate Content?

Google and other search engines include a Duplicate Content clause in their editorial guidleines. This clause states that they will not list a web page or website that contains substantially the same content as another site. This is perfectly reasonable from Googles perspective, as there users would not be impressed with search results that simply produced a list of duplicated sites. Duplicate content occurs when two websites display identical or very similar content on any number of web pages. Duplicated sites are particularly prevalent in the MLM industry where typically a company will duplicate a website thousands of times for use by their individual distributors.

Does Google penalise sites with Duplicate Content?

Unless Google believes that the duplicate content has been created as a deliberate attempt to manipulate search engine rankings, it is unlikely that your site will be banned from the search results. However Google will only list one version of a web page or website. The version that is listed will normally be the version with the most authority in terms of link popularity. This tends to be the earliest version that was published.

The Google Webmaster Blog provides information on a range of methods webmasters can use to proactively address duplicate content issues. However, the best advice would be to keep your website free of duplicate content as far as possible.

To learn more about Web Page Optimisation visit our main website or view our range of Search Engine Optimisation Articles on our Blog.

It is important to check that your website is compatible with all major web browsers. My preferred browser is Firefox. Obviously I review hundreds of different websites each week and it is not unusual to view web pages that appear to have missing text or images, over lapping text or specific functionality that simply does not work.

Inevitably the reason for this is because the site is not compatible with Firefox and the webmaster has not bothered to check if their website is compatible with the many different browsers that exist. Some web design companies are also guilty of not checking that a new site will function properly in all of the major browsers.

Because Inernet Explorer is deemed to be the major player in terms of market share, there is a tendency to forget that there are thousands of internet users, using alternative browser platforms. If your website does not perform properly when viewed through all of the major browsers then you are potentially losing out on a significant slice of business.

It is therefore vitally important to ensure that your site will function properly and look its best, no matter what browser your visitors are using.

The major web browsers and their market share as of December 2008, is as follows:

• Internet Explorer - 68.15%*
• Firefox - 21.34%*
• Safari - 7.93%*
• Chrome - 1.04%*
• Opera - 0.71%*

* Source - NetApplications.com

As you can see, if your website only functions properly with Internet Explorer, there is potentially a whopping 30% of visitors that are unable to view your site correctly.

You will need to download the latest version of each browser and install on your computer, in order to check that your site can be viewed correctly and is functioning properly. If you identify a problem with your site you should report this to your web designer/developer who should be able to fix the problem. Most compatability issued are easily resolved, once they have been identified.

If you require further information on any Web Site Design issue, please Contact Us

Ensuring that each page of your website contains unique, well crafted and search engine friendly Meta Tags, is a vitally important part of the Web Page Optimisation process.

Obviously, in my job, I review many websites each day and less than 20% contain correctly structured Meta Tags. Missing Title, Description and Keywords Tags are quite common and it is not unusual to see Keywords Tags stuffed with hundreds of individual keywords.

Things you should not do in your Title Meta Tags

• Do not use generic web page titles such as “Untitled” or “New Page”.
• Do not use web page titles that have no relation to the content on the page.
• Do not repeat a keyword search term.
• Do not use very long titles that do not help your users.
• Do not stuff unnecessary keywords in your title tag.
• Do not use the same title for more than one web page.
• Do not use more than 10/12 indiviual words.

Things you should not do in your Description Meta Tags

• Do not use descriptions that have no relation to the web page content.
• Do not use generic descriptions such as “My web page” or “About Goldfish”.
• Do not use descriptions that only contain a list of keywords.
• Do not repeat the same keyword.
• Do not copy the entire content of your web page to use as your description.
• Do not use all capital letters.
• Do not use the same description on more than one web page.
• Do not use more than 30/40 individual words.

Things you should not do in your Keywords Meta Tags

• Do not repeat exactly the same keyword.
• Do not use capital letters.
• Do not use spaces between keywords, separate only with commas.
• Do not use more than 15/20 keywords.
• Do not use the same list of keywords on every page.

For further information on how to create search engine friendly tags, visit our Meta Tag Articles page. Alternatively view our Meta Tags Optimisation Service if you are interested in having your tags written professionaly.

An XML sitemap file that is resident on your server will help Google and other search engines to index your site more easily. This type of sitemap should not be confused with the more common static page type sitemap, which can be added to a website and viewed through a browser. This type of sitemap is designed to help the user navigate your site rather than the search engine.

It is important that you provide as many ways as possible for search engines to index your site and adding an XML Sitemap will help to improve your Website Promotion efforts.

Google has launched a new tool, which uses different ways to identify your web page URL’s and will automatically create an XML Sitemap file.

Called the Google Sitemap Generator, it uses your web server’s traffic, its log files, or the files found on the server to quickly find the page URLs on your site.

Google Webmaster Trend Analyst John Mueller explains “that while most Sitemap generators either crawl websites or list the files on a server, Google have created a different kind of Sitemap generator that uses several ways to find URLs on your website and then allows you to automatically create and maintain different kinds of Sitemap files”.

Once Google Sitemap Generator has collected the URLs, it can create the following Sitemap files for you:

• XML Sitemaps for Web Search according to the sitemaps.org standard

• Mobile Sitemaps for mobile-friendly websites

• Code Search Sitemaps for source code that you make available to users

According to Mueller “sending the URLs to the right Sitemap files is simple thanks to the web-based administration console. This console gives you access to various features that make administration a piece of cake while maintaining a high level of security by default”.

You can learn more about this new tool by reading John’s article in full on the Webmaster Central Blog.

Once Google has found your website it will return on a regular basis to search for new or updated content. The frequency of visits will depend on various factors, such the size of your website (measured in number of pages), your Google Page Rank score (Google will visit higher ranked sites more frequently) and how often your site is updated with new content.

When the Google robot visits your site what does it see?

The Google robot does not see web pages as you can see them in your browser. Google cannot see colours, graphics or images including Flash generated images and movies. The Google robot can only see text, which it will extract from your web page HTML code. It is important therefore that the HTML code of your web pages contains everything in the right place, so that the Google robot can find all the relevant information to save in their database.

A single web page has many elements that can be understood by the Google robot. The most important elements where Google will look for information includes your Title Tag, Description Tag, (this will be used as the basis for the description used by Google in the search results), Keywords Tag, Headline Tags, Image Tags, Link Text and of course the main body text. These elements must contain the keyword(s) you wish to target and must be in the right keyword density, in order to achieve high rankings on Google.

It is important to ensure that Google is able to navigate through all of your internal web pages.

It is important to ensure that the structure of your individual web pages are Google friendly. It is also important to ensure that Google is able to navigate through the entire structure of your website and is able to move from page to page. The internal link structure of your website is vitally important and your site should contain easy to follow text links to every page that you want Google to see.

If your website is poorly designed or if it does not link to all of your internal pages, then the Google robot will skip these pages. If your website has been designed in Flash or if you place most of your web page content in images, then the Google robot will be unable to see your content.

It is important to make it as easy as possible for the Google robot to index your web pages in order to achieve the best possible rankings.

To learn more about Web Page Optimisation visit our main website or view our range of Search Engine Optimisation Articles.