Search Engine Optimisation Revealed
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009Search Engines use various factors to rank websites in the natural listings. SEO analyses those factors. 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. Generally, the paid advertising is on the right of the screen. A box at the top of the page will also contain paid ads. Whereas the free listings are taken from the main 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. If we’re the 7th listing on page 9 then we’re hardly going to get prospects beating our door down! No-one knows all the factors that Search Engines (SE’s) use to determine your rank. They keep it a closely guarded secret!
As a result, we now have a very skilled bunch of professionals focused on optimisation. On the Search Engine side you have upgraded technological patents being regularly filed. (To cause as much uncertainty as possible!) On the other hand, there’s Search Engine Optimisation. This utilises a series of tests and measurements to determine the most pertinent factors.
SEO looks at two different aspects - one is Off Page and the other is On Page. There are also ‘off-web’ factors such as demographic and geographic information - but we have no control over this area. To understand factors relating to off-page, please see our additional editorial.
ON PAGE SEO Explained
Adjusting a site’s content to make it friendlier to the SE’s is called On Page optimisation. This is quite straight-forward - it simply requires correctly setting up your site. Factors like: The correct use and density of keywords and internal linking; H1 and H2 header tags and meta tags.
Which may well sound like a foreign language to you! On-Page optimisation is now known to have the smallest affect on your page rank. To be blunt, some would say it hardly has any effect at all. In the past it was easy to affect Search Engines with on-page SEO. But that’s no longer the case.
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.
A Bit of Advice… A phrase that shows vast numbers of results should not be your first SEO target. For instance, if you typed into a Search Engine the term Car insurance, seventy million results would be listed for the UK alone. It’s not rocket science to realise that competing in this area wouldn’t be productive.
Although… When I search for “Southampton Car Insurance”, it comes down to a more manageable 300K. (If car insurance in Southampton was my business!) A big number still it seems - but actually quite a small number when it comes to web searches.
The extended phrase makes all the difference. In reality, getting ranked for car insurance would cost a fortune! The competition would be fierce. Not a sensible option for anyone.
A precise description is much more valuable to us. They’re known as long tail searches, because they’ll have several keywords. If your market’s very competitive, you could be selecting seven word phrases. They’re usually around three or four.
We like to start Search Engine Optimisation using terms that yield less than 500K. Occasionally we’ll accept bigger numbers, but only if the results at the top haven’t been optimised well. We’ll automatically move up the ratings for the more popular search terms as we gain more back-links. If we’ve worked well, we can start hitting the bigger terms in a few months time. A plan like this is more strategic to start with. 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 website. Limiting them to the home page is unwise. 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. So don’t limit the back links to one page. Bing, Yahoo and Google are all paying more attention to the way a website’s pages are managed and listed.
(C) Jay Kendall. Pop over to EvolveSEM.co.uk for logical business tips on SEM Consultants and SEO Consultants.
