Search Engine Optimisation is the study of factors used by the Search Engines when they sort web sites in their listings.
When we search for anything, up come the natural search lists. These do not include the paid listings. In a typical Google or Bing search, you can see the paid listings in the right column and in the yellow box at the top. The ‘natural’ listings are straight from the main index. Sites are graded by how relevant they are, and how important they are (according to the SE!).
Clearly, the goal is to get to the top of the page. We’ve little chance of being seen if we’re way down the list on page 7. No-one knows all the factors that Search Engines (SE’s) use to determine your rank. They don’t want us to know.
But there is now a skilled sector entirely devoted to benefiting from high rankings. We have Search Engines constantly developing new technology on the one hand. This causes mass confusion over which methods they use for ratings. On the other hand, there’s Search Engine Optimisation. This uses empirical testing and measuring of various factors to determine which ones are the most important.
SEO looks at two different aspects – one is Off Page and the other is On Page. In addition there are geographic and demographic factors, but SEO cannot control these. (We’ve covered ‘Off Page’ factors in a separate article, as there wasn’t enough room here.)
On Page Optimisation
If we can make changes to our site to make it more friendly to Search Engines, this is called ‘on-page’ optimisation. This is quite straight-forward – it simply requires correctly setting up your site. Doing things such as: Keyword seeding (in the right places and the right amounts), using H1 and H2 header tags (and to some extent meta-tags) and internal linking.
That might sound like gobbledy-gook, but don’t be alarmed!
The bottom-line is, that while it is the easiest to control, it has the LEAST affect on your ranking. To be blunt, some would say it hardly has any effect at all. Many years ago, you used to be able to dupe the SE’s with lots of on-page factors. That hasn’t been possible for a long time though.
If a site has a lot of in-bound back-links though, on-page factors can still be beneficial. If that’s the case, internal linking and a certain amount of on-page fine-tuning can reap rewards.
A Bit of Advice…
Avoid doing SEO on keywords that have millions of listings. The phrase ‘car insurance’ yields 70,000,000 results in the United Kingdom alone! Anyone can see it’s not wise to try and compete with 70 million other pages when you’re just starting out!
On the other hand… The phrase ‘Southampton Car Insurance’ only brings in three hundred thousand. (Assuming I was a car insurance provider in Southampton.) This still seems quite a large amount, but it’s actually not in search terms.
I’ve a much better chance in the rankings having added the word ‘Southampton’. Getting ranked for a term such as Car Insurance would take pots of money and a great deal of time. I would actually be competing with the insurance conglomerates! Not a wise choice at all – and actually not the best way to go about things either.
In fact, what we really need are terms that more specifically reflect our product or service. In Search Engine terms, these phrases (which can have a number of keywords) are referred to as long-tail. If your market’s very competitive, you could be selecting seven word phrases. Three to four keywords is average though.
In general, our recommendation is to begin SEO’ing with keyword phrases that reveal fewer than 500,000 results. Occasionally we’ll accept bigger numbers, but only if the results at the top haven’t been optimised well. Then, as we build back-links, we’ll automatically start to gain some ground on the bigger search phrases. If we put in enough effort, we can go after those big phrases in 3-12 months time. This strategy is also far more targeted at the start. We’re looking for people who want to buy, so we use terms with a commercial intention!
It’s a good idea to spread the back-links around your web site. Limiting them to the home page is unwise. Google and the other Search Engines like this ‘deep linking’. Try back-linking product group pages. These pages are usually linked to particular product pages. This means it can be very productive to drive search terms directly to them. So don’t limit the back links to one page. How your site’s pages are managed and listed is gaining more and more attention from Google, Bing and Yahoo.