What Search Engines look at

There are 2 primary factors to determining how well a site fares in the search engines: Keyword Relevance and Page Rank.

Keyword Relevance

Keyword Relevance is determined by the most frequently used words on a web page, particularly the title (<title>), headline (<h1>) and text contained in the inbound links to the given page.

Page Rank

Page Rank (or PR) is a score from 0 to 10, assigned by the Search Engine to each page of a website. The higher the score, the better a given website will rank against other websites with similar keywords relevance (ie: your competitors). The PR score increases on a curve, so the distance between a PR1 website and a PR 2 website is much easier to bridge than the distance between a PR2 and a PR3 website. When a website's rank extends beyond PR6 the differences are so massive they aren't really worth considering.

We therefore grade PR using the following scale:

• PR0: Non-Existent;
• PR1: Poor;
• PR2: Average;
• PR3: Good;
• PR4: Very Good;
• PR5: Excellent;
• PR6: Exceptional;
• PR7+: Practically Perfect;

Many factors determine your website's Page Rank: 

• How many websites linking TO your website;
• The PR of the websites that linked to your website;
• The domain suffix (.edu/.asn/ .gov are more powerful);
• The age of your website (the older the better);
• Frequency of updates to your site (more frequently is better) .

To achieve success in Search Engine results websites require a mastery of both Keyword Relevance and Page Rank. Refreshweb employs Search Engine Optimisation techniques which account for both in every website we develop.

What Search Engine's Don't Look at

Its equally important to understand what Search Engines don't look at on your site, in order to ensure your site achieves success in this field. Its critically important to note that search engines do not understand any of the following:

• Flash Animation;
• Images;
• JavaScript;
• Dynamic Addresses
  (eg: pages that have a question mark in their address).

If your website relies on any of the above techniques, it will fail to appear in search engines unless special measures have been taken (These measures are often neglected by website developers using the above techniques)