SEO. It's not about the search engines.

Effective search engine optimisation is not about search engines.

Search result quality

Google (and Yahoo and Bing, previously MSN Live) are constantly working to improve their search algorithms and quality of their results. Quality doesn't mean finding the websites that are most appealing to search engine spiders. It means working out which websites will be most useful and relevant for people using their search engine.

Relevance and authority

A whole range of factors are considered by search engine spiders when they visit your website and determine your rank and placement. Some of those include:

These are all about working out which websites are likely to have the most useful and reliable information. While the specific factors search engines look at may change over time, they're still going to keep looking for quality, trusted information.

Link-building and reputation

Writing great content isn't the only thing you can do to help your search engine rankings.

Link-building, networking and generally getting your site out there will increase your visits from people and search engines.

Popularity matters. We use social media to build your site's reputation and to develop more valuable and interesting content.

As a bonus, once you're listed well on the search engine result pages, more people will find you and want to link to you.

Understand the search engines

Search engine spiders currently can't (or have difficulty) reading information contained in flash animations and they have no idea what that picture adds to your website. Search engines find it a lot easier to read and understand text.

The best approach? Tailor websites for your visitors, but keep the search engines and their preference for text in mind when designing, building and writing your website.