Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via ‘ natural’ (‘organic’ or ‘algorithmic’) search results. To index a website, a robot or crawler starts from a known point of origin, follows links between web pages, and caches page text, content and other text or HTML based information as it moves about the web.
Google and Yahoo differ in their approach and from time to time this formula will change. It is therefore important to monitor how your pages appear in searches, and to adjust the part of the meta and/or page text that appears.

It is critical that your website structure and coding is search engine friendly. Many complex tourism sites have barriers to search engine crawlers that mean their content is not fully indexed. These barriers include:

• Mark-up code which does not validate to W3C WAI recommendations.
• Flash introduction pages and/or Flash navigation.
• Javascript navigation (commonly used to provide dropdown or rollover subsidiary navigation menus)
• Complex database URLs. These should be masked with conventional URL formats
• Relying on performing a search that cannot be replicated by search engines, to produce content from a database-driven site
• Frames construction may form a barrier for crawlers
• Redirects and linking multiple domain names to one website. Redirects can be useful in certain circumstances, but may harm rankings if used incorrectly

Accessible sites with extensive valuable text content are generally search engine friendly. Check whether the deepest pages of your site are indexed by pasting the URL (without http://), or a block of text within inverted commas, into the search engine.

Note: The information on this page is drawn from resources produced and used by E-Tourism Africa trainers Peter Varlow (TEAM Tourism) and Damian Cook. Please do not reproduce or publish this material without permission. This information is an overview of content from our Training Seminars. If you'd like learn more about this topic, attend one of our events and join the E-Tourism Seminars.