If you are going to begin a search engine optimisation campaign then it is important to know what the search engines will see on your website. If you don't know this then how can you tailor your site to the search engines. The aim of this article is to explain what the search engines will see on your website.

Rank Pages Not Sites

The first thing it is absolutely vital to know is that search engines rank pages and not websites. So basically they will consider each of your pages separately for their rankings. For that reason it is not a good idea to optimise your home page for 20 keywords and forget about the other pages on your website. To get the most out of your site you should optimise each of your pages for a maximum of 3 keywords. You then have a great chance of getting several pages of your website ranked in the search engines. It also means that you will be directing searchers to the page that is most relevant to them.

They don't See Graphics

It is important to know that search engines can read but they can't see graphics. So if you have a large number of images on your website then this will not add any benefit to your search engine ranking. There is however a way round this by adding an image alt tag. This is a tag that you add to the code that describes what the image is about. This will allow you to add your keywords and help the search engines to understand your website better.

They Have a Size Limit

In general the search engines only index up to around 100KB of each webpage. What this means for you is that if you have a large amount of content on each page the search engines will only pick up a certain amount of this. For that reason you should aim to keep your web pages short and limit the large files that will swamp the search engines. If you have a lot to say then add more pages. This will also help as search engines prefer websites with more pages and so it will help each of your pages to get a higher ranking.

They only Read Text links

When you are creating links on your website it is important to remember that they only read text links. So if you want a website that has fancy effects that need JavaScript or Flash you could have a problem. If the search engines can't follow the links on your website then they can't find all the pages on your website. If you want to get the maximum benefit from your website you need to make sure the search engines can easily find all of the pages on your website.

They Read Titles and Headers

You need to also remember that search engines will read the titles and headers on each web page and know that they are more important that the rest of your content. For that reason you need to make sure you use them in a way that would benefit your website's search engine ranking.

When you are creating your website it is important to create it so that it attracts visitors and keeps them there but you also need to make sure the search engines are considered. If a search engine can't read your website then you have a problem.