Website Visibility: The Theory and Practice of Improving Rankings

Citation

Parry, F. (2012), "Website Visibility: The Theory and Practice of Improving Rankings", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 64 No. 2, pp. 215-215. https://doi.org/10.1108/00012531211215222

The internet is growing at an alarming rate and search engines are responsible for roughly 80 per cent of all traffic, directing searchers to hopefully appropriate websites. Many searches are inexpertly formulated and with many millions of websites, it stands to reason that website owners need to be aware of how to maximise the visibility of their sites.

Weideman' s book is aimed at a broad audience – students, practitioners, website owners and decision makers – presumably website designers are already familiar with most of the contents described here. Weideman describes how search engines work and proceeds to show how a website can be constructed to rank highly in search engines results pages. He stresses the importance of constructing a good strategy for relevant keywords, keyword placement, metatags and good interface design. He also describes some of the ways to improve search engine optimisation including “white” and “black” hat techniques – white being the “ethical” way which utilises careful use of keywords, metatags etc. and black meaning underhand ways of fooling a search engine into allocating a higher rank than is deserved. A small but very useful section also evaluates the effectiveness of website popularity measures such as “hits” “page views” “stickiness” and “visitors”.

The latter half of the book is devoted to case studies showing examples of the good, the bad and the ugly in website design and gives much food for thought. There is a final chapter on recommendations and the future and a useful glossary, although I think most people can work out what a personal computer and a query are!

This is an excellent book with some very good tips and knowledgeable insight. For a book covering a technical subject, this is mostly free of technical jargon and geek‐speak, though I have to admit that my eyes began to swim in some places, especially in the chapter on website visibility models. Although anyone wanting to put this into practice will need to either employ a good web designer or undergo extensive HTML and web construction training, the principles behind this book are sound and sure to help guide the core audience.