The Latest On Search Engine Optimisation
SEO is essentially a constantly evolving study of what factors the search engines take into account when they ‘rank’ you in their natural search listings. These lists are the main results that are shown when you do a search. They’re different from the ads that companies have paid for. Pay Per Click adverts are generally sectioned off down the right hand side, with a couple across the top of the page. All the others are ‘naturally’ listed from the Search Engine’s index. Sites are graded by how relevant they are, and how important they are (according to the SE!).
We want to be right up there where we can be seen. We’re unlikely to get noticed if we’re number 8 on the tenth page! It’s impossible to know about all the SE’s rank determining factors. This is to prevent an outsider controlling the system.
Nevertheless, an entire industry has evolved around Search Engine listings. We have Search Engines constantly developing new technology on the one hand. Causing much mystification about their methods! On the other hand, there’s Search Engine Optimisation. Optimisation specialists test, quantify and evaluate a myriad of indicators that affect a site’s ratings.
Both ‘off page’ and ‘on page’ optimisation is dealt with. There are also ‘off-web’ factors such as demographic and geographic information – but we have no control over this area. (Off-Page optimisation is examined in an additional feature.)
ON PAGE SEO Explained
Making changes directly to website pages to make them more Search Engine friendly is what On-Page SEO is all about. This is the easy part and involves setting up your website ‘correctly’. Doing things such as: Using internal links, keywords, header tags and meta tags.
That might sound like gobbledy-gook, but don’t be alarmed! On-Page optimisation is now known to have the smallest affect on your page rank. In truth, many argue its relevance has disappeared altogether! In the past it was easy to affect Search Engines with on-page SEO. Not any longer though.
Having said that, if the website benefits from off page optimisation, then on page work should be looked at. When that’s happened, on-page factors can be optimised.
Some Words Of Caution… Avoid doing SEO on keywords that have millions of listings. For example, on Google’s Search Engine you’ll see 70 million listings in the UK for the term Car Insurance. Far too much competition at the start.
However… The phrase ‘Southampton Car Insurance’ only brings in three hundred thousand. (Relevant if that’s the locality I work in). This still seems quite a large amount, but it’s actually not in search terms.
Now my chances are significantly improved. In actual fact, it takes very deep pockets to get a premier listing for a term like ‘car insurance’. I would actually be competing with the insurance conglomerates! Which is really not a good idea.
It’s far better to choose phrases that are more specific to our offering. They’re known as long tail searches, because they’ll have several keywords. Phrases can be as many as seven words, depending on your competition. Generally we use 3 to 4 words.
In general, our recommendation is to begin SEO’ing with keyword phrases that reveal fewer than 500,000 results. However, if the websites at the top of the listings aren’t well optimised, we may stretch to a higher count. As our back links increase, we’ll start to rate more highly on the bigger search terms as well. If we put in enough effort, we can go after those big phrases in 3-12 months time. This line of attack starts with more focus. We go for the phrases that people who are looking to buy would use.
You should also build back links to various different pages – and not just your website’s homepage. Google and the other Search Engines like this ‘deep linking’. Category or Product Group pages are a good example. It’s worth driving specific search terms to these pages – they often have links to lots of other product pages. Thus – don’t restrict the back links to just one page. The managing and listing of individual sub-pages is receiving growing attention from the major Search Engines.
(C) 2009 Scott Edwards. Pop over to www.jasonkendall.co.uk or HERE.
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