University of Sydney / Faculty of Arts / Arts Digital / Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation

Identify Keywords

Keyword research should be an ongoing activity. Identify the keyword terms (two or three word combinations) that best target your audience. To determine the most effective keywords for your site, consider the name, word or phrase that potential visitors would type into a search engine.

As the term “Sydney University” is already much used on the site, ideally target other keyword terms to bring in more particular audiences. The more general the term chosen, the bigger the list of competing results, and the more easily the site will be buried in the results.

Few people search using only one word and generally searches are 2, 3 or 4 word sets, or a set of keyword terms. So using sets of three or four word keyword terms – that are as unique in combination as possible - throughout a site achieves the best results. Discipline-specific terms may have greater effect than more general terms.

Using Keywords on Your Site

Key pages must have unique titles, meta tag descriptions and good body text for high rankings. The text appearing at the top of your page (the first 250 words) is seen as more important than any following text, and is an optimal place for keywords.

  • Page body text: Each page should have at least 200 - 250 words of keyword term rich text, especially the home page, e.g. 2 or 3 times per 100 words repetition of text keyword terms (keyword density)
  • Section Headers: These titles should contain short description of page using keywords terms where possible, using no more than 7 words, and each title should be unique
  • Meta tag description: The meta tag description needs to be unique for each main page. Each page should have a well written, keyword term rich Meta Tag description of up to 25 words. The keyword or 'subject' tag is rarely used and is optional.

Quick Tips

  • Use keywords 2 to 3 times in body text (using keywords more than three times can negatively affect your ranking as over-used terms can be considered 'spam' by search engines)
  • Keep your key terms together in the text with no or few other words between them
  • Rearrange your key terms within the text in good readable copy.
  • Use the key terms throughout throughout your site

Other Places to Include Keywords

  • the Section Header in the CMS template (the page title)
  • the meta tag description (meta keywords are optional)
  • the first sentence of the page.
  • descriptions of images (ALT tags or captions)

Links from Other Sites

One of the key factors that search engines use to rank websites is the number of links to them from other sites. They also consider the 'quality' of those links (e.g. links from Harvard University would be seen as higher quality than those from a little-known commercial domain.). The more inbound links to your site, the higher your site's weighting and rank in search engines. In addition, the higher a linking website is ranked, the more weight is given to that link ('quality').

As such it is important to develop links to your site from other relevant sites. There is no automatic way to do this - it usually involves requesting a link from other organisations, often in return for a link on your site to them. This activity should be part of any relationships your area has with other organisations, partners and institutions. It also helps to think about what content you can publish which your target markets may find interesting or useful, in order to generate more links from them back to your site.

Smarter URLS

Search engines also look in the addresses, or URLs, of pages for relevant keywords. As such it helps to use whole english words in page addresses. File and folder names should be in lowercase, without spaces (instead use either an underscore or dash to separate words), and kept to three words or less.

For example:

  • www.usyd.edu.au/science/degrees/bachelor-information-technology.shtml

is better than

  • www.usyd.edu.au/scifac/ug/bachIT.shtml