SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of making your website or web page more attractive to the major search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Being more attractive to Google and gaining high SERP (Search Engine Results Page) you will attract more targeted visitors, turning them to customers via your increased conversion ratio.
Google, Yahoo and MSN Live are becoming more and more important for online marketing. Ten years ago it was rare to find a search engine (in fact I can remember using Google in 1997 when there were only 200,000 pages indexed!), most websites were then still using word of mouth and direct marketing such as print and magazines to promote their website and gain traffic.
Over the past ten years the number of pages indexed by Google has increased by a factor of 7,000%, and competition has become more and more fierce for the top places. Online retail is one technological challenge that companies must address in order to keep up with the changing times. According to a major high street retailer, retail sales online are expected to increase at a 19 percent annual compounded rate through 2008.
This page will hopefully give you some optimisation tips to gain the edge over your competitors in search engine rankings. None of these tips are rocket science, they can all be easily to implement, but they do require iterative reviews. It must be understood that there is no SEO holy grail, no catch all, no golden fleece (or whatever you want to call it) every site is different and will have its own SEO strategy. Something that works well on one site may not work at all, or even have an adverse effect, on a completely different site.
It must also be understood that SEO is not a one-off process, it requires regular analysis and review. Search engines like Google are Organic Markets, which means that they are constantly changing day-by-day, so while you may be ranked number 1 in Google one month, leaving your site alone and ignoring market trends will give competitors chance to knock you off the top spot. There are various software tools that allow you to check SERP, these can be very helpful in optimising you site.
These SEO optimisation tips are not presented in any kind of order; tip one is no better than tip ten.
Definitions
- SEF - Search Engine Friendly
- SEM - Search Engine Marketing
- SEO - Search Engine Optimisation
- SERP - Search Engine Results Page, lower the better. SERP of 1 indicates the page is on the first page of results.
- Keyword Stuffing - A black hat technique whereby any and all keywords are stuffed into a page, without any context.
1. Content
As the saying goes, Content is King, so make sure that your web copy (body text) is of top quality. You should aim for a minimum of 100 words and a maximum of 800 per page. More words than that should be split into two pages. Content must also be unique as duplicate content is often heavily penalised from the likes of Google.
You should use all of your keywords and key phrases, but try and keep the keyword density around 3-5%. Too low and it wont get ranked for that phrase, to high and you’ll be penalised for "keyword stuffing".
Page features, such as headers, navigation and footers, should not be included as web copy text.
2. Title Tag
This is part of the head section in html code surrounded by <title></title>, and it determines the title for search results as well as the top of the browser window.
It is important to create titles that are keyword rich, without stuffing, and be relevant.
Example:
- Lonewolf Online : Not a good title, no keywords, not descriptive of page.
- Lonewolf Online - SEO Tips : Better, but can still be improved.
- SEO Optimisation Tips - Lonewolf Online : Even Better Still, keywords are placed towards the front of the title, thus ranking higher.
- SEO SERP SEM Optimisation Tips Tutorials Help : OTT: Looks like keyword stuffing and results will suffer.
3. Meta Keywords
The keywords are a comma separated list contained within the head tag using the meta tag.
<meta name="Keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3..." />
There is a lot of speculation over the usefulness of this tag, some say that search engines (especially Google) ignore the tag, or that Yahoo and MSN pay particular importance to it. It does not hurt to have a good set of keywords so spend some time creating a good keyword list.
The keywords should be more key phrases. With so much competition on the Internet, it will be extremely difficult to get good ranking for singular keywords such as “photography” or “astronomy”. Instead, try and target your niche phrases such as “wildlife photography uk”.
Limit your keywords to around 25 for best performance.
4. Meta Description
Again, this tag has a lot of speculation over its usefulness. In search results it used to form the text under the title, however search engines now show contextual results from the body text. Still, it does not hurt to write a brief description, and try and get your niche phrase in there too.
Your description should be around 150-200 characters long.
5. URL Structure
You should use SEF URL’s (Search Engine Friendly Addresses) if possible, and create a structure that will highlight your keywords.
Instead of a link that maybe:
http://www.myshop.com/index.php?c=4&prod=3245&code=df432
it can be optimised to look more friendly, such as:
http://www.myshop.com/clothing/female/shirts/df432/
This will inject some nice keywords into the URL, which should increase ranking. It also looks more professional and is easier for you customers to remember or write down.
For best results, URL structure must be thought about, planned and implemented from the start of the project. Changing URL structure mid way through will create orphaned links, confuse search engines and decrease page rank. If you do not handle this properly any page rank on the old page will not be transferred to the new page, decreasing your search engine visibility. You also run the risk of duplicate content penalties.
6. Strong keywords
Try adding <strong></strong> around some keywords towards the start of your body text to add some emphasis. Do not what ever you do use this tip on all keywords or every occurrence of a keyword. Pick 2 or 3 keywords and emphasise the first natural occurrence of that keyword.
7. Alt and Title tags
Images and anchor links can (and should) have alt and title tags. The alt tag should contain an alternate representation of the image should the image not load, while the title tag should contain a description for the link or image. Search engines look at these tags to determine the relevance of the link or the content of the image.
8. Correct Copy
Make sure that your ‘copy’ (technical name for the text you write) is clear, concise and to the point. Don’t deviate or go off on a tangent, as it will distract your readers. Spell check and proof read you copy; otherwise you will loose online credibility.
9. Research keywords
Now you have your content written, start researching keywords using Google Keyword Tool or Overture (see box right). These tools can help discover new keywords and phrases that you can target, or combinations of keywords that work well together. You can determine you niche phrase, or discover new keywords you haven’t even thought of.
10. Rewrite your content
After you have researched your keywords and phrases, rewrite your content to take advantage of them. Get you new key phrases into the body text. You’ll be surprised at what people will search for and find your site.
11. Spiders Eye View
Use a text browser such as Lynx to view your website. This will give you an impression of what Google will see, and can be useful for analysing problem areas. Can your site be navigated in text only more? If not you may not be catering for accessibility regulations.
