search engine optimization advice

[samjones]

Hi! I’m new to this and I'm looking for help on optimising my website to get it higher up in the search engines. Has anyone got any tips? My site is about double glazing so i was thinking of trying to link it to sites on homes, gardening to find people interested in getting replacement windows, doors or a conservatory that they can order online. Does anyone know a low cost way to do this? Are directories and web rings a good idea?

Many thanks

[si_the_geek]

Welcome to VBForums!

I have moved this thread to a more appropriate area (the Deployment forum is about installing applications). I have also removed the link from your post, as it is not actually relevant to the question - and as such is just advertising (which is against our Acceptable Use Policy, see the bottom of the page).


SEO is a complex task, one which I have some experience of. The first thing to note is that all search engines look for different things - and doing something that works for one may well get you dropped down the rankings in another.

The most important thing for all of them tho is to have a useful and well designed site. If you are providing a decent amount of information (in a 'nice' way) then people will want to look, and the search engines will too.

Another good step is to check that your pages are valid (using the w3c validator service), and removing any bugs that are found - that way the search engines (and browsers) will need to do less work to "render" the pages.

Some search engines will actively "frown on" web rings etc, but directories are often good (especially the ones with human reviewers).

[ComputerJy]

take a look

[mendhak]

I also hear that having .HTML extensions to the files gives it preference by search engines. So if you are using some server side technology such as ASP.NET, you can create an HTTPHandler which will handle the HTML calls.