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Beginners Quick Guide To SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization), is different to Pay Per Click in the sense that it can't be tracked so easily and despite best efforts there is no control or guarantees.
It is however an important part of your online marketing and should be thought about carefully. The first question you must ask yourself - "is my website suitable for SEO?"
Not every site is suitable and ecommerce sites can normally achieve far greater results and lasting success with a dynamic Pay Per Click campaign than they could investing time, energy and money into SEO.
On the other hand, a decent sized content site with rich information can achieve long term success with natural listings by focusing on some simple strategies and good old fashioned elbow grease.
Unfortunately, with SEO, there are no shortcuts, and if you are looking for a way to get quick and easy results, then this isn't it. But instead, you will need to carry out some hard work, especially in relation to the actual content of your site.
Also, you will need to have plenty of patience, as results do not happen overnight. So if you are looking to improve the search engine position of your site, you should consider this very early on when looking at using SEO.
However, the following points are important.
The Foundation of Your SEO Success
Good content is probably the simplest and single most important point you should start with, especially if you want your site to be found on the web. Although your site may be technically perfect so that the search engine robots find it, you will find that it will not help if the actual content of your site is not good.
There is software available for website owners that actually writes and produces content for websites which gives the user a content rich site fast. Lots of content it may be, but rich it is not. These spammy pages contain on the most part absolute rubbish that is of no real value to the visitors. So avoid this approach and focus on real content that is relevant and that your visitors will find useful and interesting.
The content also needs to be unique and specific so that it will appeal to people. Moreover, it needs to be particularly appealing to those people looking for information related to your site, your products or services.
Is Your Content Fresh?
If you add new content to your site on a regular basis, you are giving your visitors more reasons for returning to it. Because of this, search engine robots will also visit your site more often as soon as they notice that you are updating it regularly. So what this means is that any new content you add, will then be indexed much quicker in the future.
The hidden benefit of all this good content is the appeal it will have for other website owners for considering linking to your site. Having good quality links to your site is another part of the search engine puzzle that we'll cover in a moment, but for now, forget the search engines and concentrate on the humans who visit your site - is it relevant? It the information useful and interesting? And if you were one of the other website owners, would YOU want to link to your site?
Use Descriptive Page Titles
If you make your page titles as simple, descriptive and relevant as possible, it will make it easier for the search engines to know what each page of your site is about. This will then allow people to scan through the search results they get, and are able to quickly determine if your document contains what they are actually looking for.
Also, it should be remembered that the page title is also what is used in order to link to your site from the results provided by the search engines.
As a result of this, it is important to ensure that the title on the page is one of your most important elements of your site. In fact, some people will argue that this is the most important part of any site above all other things.
Forget Graphics and Use Real Headings
This is where you need to use h1-h6 (header tags) elements for your headings. By using graphics for your headings you are able to use any typeface you want (but search engines will not pay much attention to this). Even if you do use the alt attribute to specify an alternate text for heading images, this is not anywhere near as important as using real text in a heading element.
But if you are unable to use real text, then look at the various image or flash replacement techniques that are available instead. However, be aware that there may be some risk involved in doing this. As image replacement involves hiding text, it is quite possible that you may be penalized by search engines for doing this. But at present, this kind of risk seems pretty slim.
Use Search Engine Friendly URLs
It is important to use search engine friendly URL's, as opposed to dynamically generated ones that have a query string (which lets the server know which data to fetch from a database). Unfortunately, there are many search engine robots which have difficulties with this kind of URL and they may well stop at the question mark, and so not actually look at the query string.
By using a search engine friendly URL; you are helping both your ranking and users of your site. Many sites have seen an incredible improvement just because they have changed the URL scheme on it. However, the modification and rewriting of a site's URL can be a little tricky.
Getting Linked
There is no easy or mystical way in order to solve this. The really only good way to ensure that your site gets linked is to ensure that it contains good content. For any site on the web, incoming links are very important, especially for Search Engine Optimisation. In fact, you may find that this is the hardest part of SEO for you to implement.
Another strategy is to approach other website owners in related fields and ask for a link to your site. The trick is to not just end up as another link buried on an already busy 'links page', but rather to be a specific link from a specific page.
For example, a website selling art posters will probably be happy to put your 'Renoir Umbrellas' link on their links page. A far better strategy would be a link from their "Renoir" page to your homepage. A relevant link. There is also an argument where many people have found that incoming links are less important, especially where you have more specific and unique content on your site. We look at link building as an extra arrow in your arsenal and one that should definitely be a focus.
Submission Impossible
Although this is often overrated, submitting your site to directories and search engines can actually be useful. This is especially important if the site happens to be new and has not as yet been picked up by Google and many of the other search engines that are around.
But if you do want to look at submitting it to some directories, you may want to consider using Yahoo Directory and Open Directory Project and some directories specific to your topic (for example, if you have a blog, try submitting to www.blog-search.info). But you will need patience, as it can take several weeks for any submissions to be processed unless you pay for it to be listed.
Paying for listings can often expedite inclusion within 48 hours to 10 days. Although in most cases this does NOT guarantee inclusion. Yahoo for example charges $300 (UK companies still pay in US dollars) for a review before inclusion, but if your submission is not excepted you do not get your money back. So pay close attention to each directory's submission guidelines and make sure your site is fully working as broken links or non-working pages is almost an instant show stopper.
One last word with submissions. Although not as popular today, the use of link farms is more disguised. Link farms are a group of websites that all link to the other websites within the group. Although some link farms were created by hand, most are created automatically by programmes. Designed to 'trick' search engines into thinking your site is "oh so popular", search engines have moved away from just popularity to looking at the 'weight' of the link in terms of relevance and Page Rank.
I mention link farms as a total no-no because this method was previously used by newbies to SEO who are conned into thinking their new found popularity will impress the search engines. Best case scenario is the search engines will simply ignore this and look at your site for its other merits. Worst case scenario is you will be 'black listed' and not indexed by the search engines and therefore receive no traffic.
Link building is a good practice but it needs to be done right. It's labour intensive and one of my SEO mangers describes the activity as "bloody boring!" to which I love to reply "tough, it's your job now get back to your computer and build those links!" We jest but we do so because there is no alternative. Its hard work, its dull I agree but the long term results can be worth it so roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. Avoid any quick fixes.
Don't Try to Out-Smart the Search Engines
Over the years Search Engines have become clever - really clever. And almost any 'genius' idea you think of to try and get one up on them has already been thought of before.
Treat them with the respect they deserve if you want them to favour your website put of other all the other THOUASNDS of websites and place you in their top ten.
Never use such methods as cloaking, link farms, keyword stuffing, alt text spamming or any other dubious ways.
Although they may work for a short time, you not only risk getting your site penalised, but it could actually be banned from search engines altogether. As search engines like their results to be accurate, they just do not take kindly to people trying to trick them.
And if you don't know what keyword stuffing, alt text spamming and cloaking is - GOOD! Stick to being honest and ethical in your approach and these practices won't ever become an issue for you.
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
These days Meta Tags are small stuff. You will find that most search engines do not place a great deal of value on the content contained within Meta Tags anymore. This is because they have been used too much by spammers. So instead, if you need to, use Meta description elements. Although keywords will not hurt, they don't really help either, so generally it is not worth the effort to use them or spend extra time thinking about them.
Often there are some search engine sites which will use the content of a Meta description element to describe a site in their search result listings. So whenever possible, make their contents unique and descriptive for every document or page.
This has been a few basic guidelines to assist you when thinking about your future SEO. There is of course much more that can be done in order to increase your site's visibility with the search engines and we are always here to help you do that.
For more information about our SEO services and options call us on 0845 4677 683 or submit an enquiry on the contact page and we'll gladly call you back.
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