A study of Search Engine Optimisation methods

Abstract

Search Engines have become an integral part of daily internet usage. The search engine is the first stop for web users when they are looking for a product, service or some particular information. The search engine will return a list of results to a given search query, based on the particular searching technology in use. The user will select websites from the search engine results pages to locate the sites they wanted. The internet has grown dramatically, so much that the scenario described above could result in hundreds or thousands of pages being returned by a search engine. The user is more likely to select the top results, rather than trawl through each page. Therefore, how do web designers or managers promote a website so that it appears at the top of these results pages? The answer which is commonly given to this question is Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is the process of designing (or modifying) a website to improve its search ranking. This thesis sets out to determine if SEO methods can improve the ranking of a website. The different methods of SEO will be identified. These methods will be tested on different websites in order to determine the SEO methods that improve ranking most. 8 The results of the improvements should form a set of guidelines for web developers who wish to improve the traffic to their websites via search engines.