A beginners guide to Search Engine Optimisation
What is search engine optimisation?
Search engine optimisation (or SEO) is a collective terms for various techniques you can use to build and populate your website so that the number and quality of visitors is as high as possible. It does not include how to maximise ‘paid for’ traffic.
For more information on search engine optimisation download this Free DIY SEO Guide from internet marketing specialists BlueClaw.
Google Adwords
Adwords is a way of paying to advertise your website high up on Google search results. The advert will show on either the top or the right hand side of the search results pages in the 'sponsored links' area, but only if you get it right. To create successful adwords adverts you need to get the words in the advert right and bid on the right keywords. It's an art not a science and you can end up spending an awful lot of money on adwords and still not get any more sales as a result. Read more about Adwords here and try and find a reputable seo company who can do it for you. Don't get locked into a long contract, agree what you can expect from their services, and make sure you understand all the charges.
What do search engines like to see?
Forget all the clever stuff about hiding the words ‘sex’ and ‘free’ and ‘chocolate’ on your web pages. Forget also about repeating the same word 10, 20 or 30 times per page. The most popular search engines are now much smarter than that. What search engines like to see is pretty much the same as what your visitors will like, which is:
- a well structured, easy to navigate website
- that contains well written, relevant and unique content
- organised is a way that makes it easy to find
- and that is regularly updated with new content
Remember: search engines can tell if you’re trying to trick them . . . . and they don’t like it.
Search engine optimisation is a very skilled area but here are some basic good practices to follow to help improve your web presence.
For a more detailed look at how to make your website search engine friendly see our article How to help Google read your website.
Choosing the right web designer
You have several options available for creating your website:
- A template you can customise. WordPress and Joomla are 2 popular open source web design packages. You will find a number of web designers that can help you with choosing a template and customising it to suit your business. Ask them to show you how to add and edit content.
- Your friend who builds websites as a hobby
- A web design company
- A graphic design/marketing/branding agency
These are probably listed in increasing order of expense and each has its merits and disadvantages in terms of speed and functionality. Whichever one you choose to go with, the main things to bear in mind are that search engines:
- don’t understand frames
- don’t understand flash or other animated introductions
- don’t understand links on images
- don’t generally understand drop down menus or forms
- do like each page having its own unique url
- do like different keywords for each page
- do like unique content that is regularly updated
Anything a search engine doesn’t understand on your site is bad news – it will either get bored and go away, or it simply won’t get to all the pages on your site so won’t know about everything that’s on it.
Picking the right keywords
Keywords are simply the words that a visitor might use to search for your website. For example if you’re looking for a hairdresser in Milton Keynes you might type in ‘hairdresser Milton Keynes’. If you are a hairdresser in Milton Keynes you need to make sure that the content of your site makes it very clear to search engines so that you have a chance of being listed near the top of the search results.
Of course you need to get more sophisticated than this, as chances are there are rather a lot of hairdressers in Milton Keynes. That’s where your unique selling points come in – what is it about your service that makes it better or different from anyone else’s? maybe it’s your location in a particular area of the city, or maybe you provide a particular type of hairdressing that you’re renowned for, maybe you have an over 65’s day, maybe you do better hair extensions or more elaborate colouring than anyone else, maybe you have a cheaper rate for children, and so on. All these features about your service should be included in the content on your site so you are included in the search results when people are looking for that service.
Well written and unique web content will help you create a great first impression and help your visitors and search engines understand what your business is all about. Try Write4You for professionally written content for your website.
Linking to and from other sites
This is no longer a ‘numbers’ game. It used to be that the higher the number of sites you link to the better, then it moved on to only sites linking to you being counted. But now the search engines, in their never-ending challenge to improve user experience, only take notice of links that are relevant to your site and its content.
So avoid packing your site with irrelevant links and avoid so called ‘link farms’ who promise to find you hundreds of links for your site. They do this by sending spam emails to other sites asking for link exchanges.
How to choose your link text
Whether you’re linking to another website or to a page within your own website, make sure your users (and the search engines) know what to expect by using descriptive link text. Phrases like ‘click here’ are repetitive and don’t really help anyone. For example ‘View our range of hair accessories’ is far more descriptive and helpful than ‘click here for accessories’.
Creating a site map
Make things easy for search engines and create a site map for your site. A site map usually sits on a separate page and is simply list of the pages on your site (eg home, about us, how to find us, price list, parking nearby), together with any sub pages contained within your site. If you have a complex menu structure or lots of pages create a site map for each main page and link them together.
How do search engines find your website
Search engines send ‘spiders’ to crawl web pages to keep their information on what is on the web up to date. Put very simply, the more often the content on your site changes and the more often people visit it, the more frequently the spiders will visit your site and the higher it will feature in the search results pages. However when your site first goes live it may take the search engines a while to find you, so you can speed things up a bit if you tell them you’re there.
Google and Yahoo both provide a facility to submit your website:
Google webmaster central is not only a tool to submit your website but also a range of webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.
Yahoo website submit tool
Tracking your web visitors
Some web designers will provide you with a web analytics tool to track the number of visitors coming to your site, which are the most popular pages, at what point they’re leaving your website, which search string they used to find you, and so on. This will enable you to continually amend and update your site to improve the number of visitors you’re getting and the number who convert into a paying customer.
Google provides free web analytics tools in its webmaster central zone.
A beginners guide to Search Engine Optimisation
What is search engine optimisation?
Search engine optimisation (or SEO) is a collective terms for various techniques you can use to build and populate your website so that the number and quality of visitors is as high as possible. It does not include how to maximise ‘paid for’ traffic.
For more information on search engine optimisation download this Free DIY SEO Guide from internet marketing specialists BlueClaw.
Google Adwords
Adwords is a way of paying to advertise your website high up on Google search results. The advert will show on either the top or the right hand side of the search results pages in the 'sponsored links' area, but only if you get it right. To create successful adwords adverts you need to get the words in the advert right and bid on the right keywords. It's an art not a science and you can end up spending an awful lot of money on adwords and still not get any more sales as a result. Read more about Adwords here and try and find a reputable seo company who can do it for you. Don't get locked into a long contract, agree what you can expect from their services, and make sure you understand all the charges.
What do search engines like to see?
Forget all the clever stuff about hiding the words ‘sex’ and ‘free’ and ‘chocolate’ on your web pages. Forget also about repeating the same word 10, 20 or 30 times per page. The most popular search engines are now much smarter than that. What search engines like to see is pretty much the same as what your visitors will like, which is:
- a well structured, easy to navigate website
- that contains well written, relevant and unique content
- organised is a way that makes it easy to find
- and that is regularly updated with new content
Remember: search engines can tell if you’re trying to trick them . . . . and they don’t like it.
Search engine optimisation is a very skilled area but here are some basic good practices to follow to help improve your web presence.
For a more detailed look at how to make your website search engine friendly see our article How to help Google read your website.
Choosing the right web designer
You have several options available for creating your website:
- A template you can customise. WordPress and Joomla are 2 popular open source web design packages. You will find a number of web designers that can help you with choosing a template and customising it to suit your business. Ask them to show you how to add and edit content.
- Your friend who builds websites as a hobby
- A web design company
- A graphic design/marketing/branding agency
These are probably listed in increasing order of expense and each has its merits and disadvantages in terms of speed and functionality. Whichever one you choose to go with, the main things to bear in mind are that search engines:
- don’t understand frames
- don’t understand flash or other animated introductions
- don’t understand links on images
- don’t generally understand drop down menus or forms
- do like each page having its own unique url
- do like different keywords for each page
- do like unique content that is regularly updated
Anything a search engine doesn’t understand on your site is bad news – it will either get bored and go away, or it simply won’t get to all the pages on your site so won’t know about everything that’s on it.
Picking the right keywords
Keywords are simply the words that a visitor might use to search for your website. For example if you’re looking for a hairdresser in Milton Keynes you might type in ‘hairdresser Milton Keynes’. If you are a hairdresser in Milton Keynes you need to make sure that the content of your site makes it very clear to search engines so that you have a chance of being listed near the top of the search results.
Of course you need to get more sophisticated than this, as chances are there are rather a lot of hairdressers in Milton Keynes. That’s where your unique selling points come in – what is it about your service that makes it better or different from anyone else’s? maybe it’s your location in a particular area of the city, or maybe you provide a particular type of hairdressing that you’re renowned for, maybe you have an over 65’s day, maybe you do better hair extensions or more elaborate colouring than anyone else, maybe you have a cheaper rate for children, and so on. All these features about your service should be included in the content on your site so you are included in the search results when people are looking for that service.
Well written and unique web content will help you create a great first impression and help your visitors and search engines understand what your business is all about. Try Write4You for professionally written content for your website.
Linking to and from other sites
This is no longer a ‘numbers’ game. It used to be that the higher the number of sites you link to the better, then it moved on to only sites linking to you being counted. But now the search engines, in their never-ending challenge to improve user experience, only take notice of links that are relevant to your site and its content.
So avoid packing your site with irrelevant links and avoid so called ‘link farms’ who promise to find you hundreds of links for your site. They do this by sending spam emails to other sites asking for link exchanges.
How to choose your link text
Whether you’re linking to another website or to a page within your own website, make sure your users (and the search engines) know what to expect by using descriptive link text. Phrases like ‘click here’ are repetitive and don’t really help anyone. For example ‘View our range of hair accessories’ is far more descriptive and helpful than ‘click here for accessories’.
Creating a site map
Make things easy for search engines and create a site map for your site. A site map usually sits on a separate page and is simply list of the pages on your site (eg home, about us, how to find us, price list, parking nearby), together with any sub pages contained within your site. If you have a complex menu structure or lots of pages create a site map for each main page and link them together.
How do search engines find your website
Search engines send ‘spiders’ to crawl web pages to keep their information on what is on the web up to date. Put very simply, the more often the content on your site changes and the more often people visit it, the more frequently the spiders will visit your site and the higher it will feature in the search results pages. However when your site first goes live it may take the search engines a while to find you, so you can speed things up a bit if you tell them you’re there.
Google and Yahoo both provide a facility to submit your website:
Google webmaster central is not only a tool to submit your website but also a range of webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.
Yahoo website submit tool
Tracking your web visitors
Some web designers will provide you with a web analytics tool to track the number of visitors coming to your site, which are the most popular pages, at what point they’re leaving your website, which search string they used to find you, and so on. This will enable you to continually amend and update your site to improve the number of visitors you’re getting and the number who convert into a paying customer.
Google provides free web analytics tools in its webmaster central zone.