Search Engine Optimisation is an ever changing discipline. It works to maximise a website’s ratings on the ‘natural’ search lists on major Search Engines. The natural listings form the main body of a Search Engine’s pages. These do not include the paid listings. On the major Search Engines, you’ll see a box at the top, and a column down the right hand side. These are the paid adverts. Naturally listed adverts have been taken directly from the index. They show sites listed in the order of importance and relevance – according to their algorithm.
Of course, we would like to be as high as possible on page one. If we’re the 7th listing on page 9 then we’re hardly going to get prospects beating our door down! It’s impossible to know about all the SE’s rank determining factors. It isn’t something they publicise to the rest of us!
So, over the years a complete industry has grown up around this. And so we have on one side Google and Bing purposely patenting different technologies. Causing much mystification about their methods! And then you have an industry built around SEO. This uses empirical testing and measuring of various factors to determine which ones are the most important.
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. (We will cover off page optimisation in a separate article.)
Search Engine Optimisation ‘On-Page’
Making changes directly to website pages to make them more Search Engine friendly is what On-Page SEO is all about. This website configuration is fairly simple. Doing things such as: Using internal links, keywords, header tags and meta tags.
That might sound like gobbledy-gook, but don’t be alarmed! Actually, though on page work is straightforward it probably accounts for little. In fact, it is widely believed that it has very little effect at all anymore. Search Engines used to credit on page factors in the past. That’s not how it is now though.
On-Page can still be important though if Off-Page has been taken care of. In that circumstance, some On-Page tweaks and internal links can have an impact.
A Bit of Advice… A phrase that shows vast numbers of results should not be your first SEO target. For example, on Google’s Search Engine you’ll see 70 million listings in the UK for the term Car Insurance. It’s not rocket science to realise that competing in this area wouldn’t be productive.
And Yet – The phrase ‘Southampton Car Insurance’ only brings in three hundred thousand. (Presuming that was my market). Though still large, this is a much more manageable figure.
I’ve a much better chance in the rankings having added the word ‘Southampton’. In reality, getting ranked for car insurance would cost a fortune! I’d actually be head to head with the really big boys. So not a great idea – especially, in fact, when there are much better ways to go about it.
It’s far better to choose phrases that are more specific to our offering. In SEO terms, they’re referred to as Long Tail Searches, as they include several relevant words. It depends on your competition, but long-tail searches can be up to 6 or 7 words. They’re usually around three or four.
We prefer to begin optimisation strategies with phrases that bring in less than five hundred thousand results. Sometimes we’ll consider higher counts if the top results are not benefitting from optimisation. Over time we’ll gain ground on the larger search terms. This will happen automatically through building back links. We can go for some of those after several months if we’ve SEO’d well. It’s a much more targeted strategy. Frankly, we’re only interested in the customers who are looking specifically for what we offer. There’s much more chance these people will buy!
Back Links should be shared between several web pages on your site and not just restricted to the Homepage. We call this ‘deep-linking’ – and Google in particular likes this. Try back-linking product group pages. They very frequently link up to a range of sub-pages, so driving appropriate terms to them can be very worthwhile. 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.