A Simple Guide to Search Engine Optimisation

How to make sure your website gets found

SEO – or search engine optimisation – has become a term that is bandied around a lot. It is no longer enough, say the experts, to have a website – you have to make sure it is found. With most companies (even small traders) having websites these days, getting found is the point. So how can you know you are not wasting the money you put into your website design, development and hosting?

Clearly the first place to start is to go to a major search engine (the top one being, of course, Google) and typing in what you would expect your customers to type in. If you’re already near the top, then it is likely that you are being found.

You can of course cheat. Cheating – or to give it its proper name, pay-per-click or payper- placement – is buying your way up the rankings. It can be cost effective but the cost will depend on the competition for the search. With Pay-per-click advertising (AdWords with Google, but also known as Pay-for-placement), you are charged when a visitor clicks on your ad. And with Pay-for-inclusion advertising, you are charged for each inclusion into search engine results and for each click on your ad. Unfortunately for the would-be cheat, potential customers are increasingly avoiding them. Recent research indicated that around 80% of internet users do not click on the paid-for search engine results, dropping to 67% when they want to buy something. Clearly internet users think that if they can find you naturally, then you must somehow be better than if they find you because you’ve paid to appear here. The implication is obvious – it pays to appear naturally high up the results. So how do you manage this?

Think content!

The first thing to do is to ensure that the content on your website is informative, relevant and focussed on what is important to your customers! It is very easy to lose track of this and spend too much time and money on SEO. If your website is of not interest at all to those who find it, there is little point being found!

Think keywords!

The next thing to do is to choose the keywords that accurately reflect what your content is about. They should also match the words that your potential customers will use when looking for your services. These ‘keywords’ should be both in the visible part of your website and hidden in the code (see the tags section below) to summarise what your website is about. They are used by search engines to identify how relevant your website is to the search. In order to find the right keywords you can get help on your quest from tools such as Wordtracker or Overture. They tell you which keyword combinations are used and score how frequently they are used. It is easy to think that high-scoring terms are better than low-scoring ones, but actually the latter might be used by people who know exactly what they want and are more likely to convert into customers (e.g. someone looking for brochure design Guildford is going to get fewer hits than someone just looking for brochures, but the former is likely to be a more likely customer for a Guildford based brochure designer).

It is worth reviewing this regularly, as the words used by internet users change over time in many sectors. Alternatively, you can hire the service of a company to help you with this whole area.

Think tags!

Next, make sure your keywords are tagged appropriately. Modern coding standards will help with the tagging – matching important words to the highest level of ‘title’ in the pages. The title tag is very important. It appears at the top of the browser window, and in the search engine results page as a link to your website. This tag should include the most relevant keywords. The description tag should contain a short paragraph about the page. It is used by search engine to summarise your website. The keywords tag was initially used to provide additional information about a page. It sounded good in theory but in practice, it was often used in ways they were never intended, including the addition of excessive or irrelevant keywords. Now, it is only used to reinforce content that is already on a page.

In addition to the tags, the coding of your pages should be clear to help search engines index your site easily. Using CSS - Cascading Style Sheets - helps to keep it uncluttered. Ask if your web developer uses these.

Think Links!

Once your website is up and running, with the right content using the right keywords tagged in the right way, the next step is to ensure that you are seen as important in the eyes of the search engines. If yours is the only website offering black eggs in Surrey and someone searches for black eggs in Surrey, then you will be found at the top of the search results, so long as you have been competently submitted to the search engines by your developer. But if you are in a market with many competitors, in order to be seen as important and to move up the rankings, you need something else – you need to be listed and linked to as much as possible. This is the hard work of search engine optimisation. The more sites you are listed on the better (so it’s partly numeric). But not all sites are equal. There is also an element of where you are listed. Websites are categorised into levels of authority – top are government sites, next academic and official. A link from one of these sites is worth a lot more than a link from a local site. These inbound links (also knows as backlinks) are therefore very important. If the website that links to you has a higher ranking than you, the ranking of your website will increase. It’s important therefore to establish a well-chosen online network. This can include newsletters or emagazines published for your trade, and various online directories, forums and blogs.
Don’t stop!

And just when you’ve done all this hard work, you have to remember to keep going. Spending time fine-tuning your content will be time well spent. Keeping up to date with the changes in SEO principles can also assist – talk to your web developer about how relevant this is to you. And don’t stop adding links to your website, posting articles that point to you and keeping your website up to date with news and business developments.