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. Natural or ‘organic’ lists form the main body of a SE page. These do not include the paid listings. The PPC (paid) entries tend to feature at the top and right side of the page. Whilst the other free ads have been listed by the SE’s. The order of each site is determined by its ‘importance’ and relevance to the keyword.
Plainly our aim is to get our site up with the top ones. We’re unlikely to get noticed if we’re number 8 on the tenth page! Only those in the Search Engine’s ‘inner circle’ know all the factors used to position sites. It’s not in the SE’s interest to tell people everything they do.
But there is now a skilled sector entirely devoted to benefiting from high rankings. On the Search Engine side you have upgraded technological patents being regularly filed. (To cause as much uncertainty as possible!) And to rival that, we have a large Search Engine Optimisation sector. Optimisation specialists test, quantify and evaluate a myriad of indicators that affect a site’s ratings.
SEO looks at two different aspects – one is Off Page and the other is On Page. Additionally, demographics have an influence, but SEO doesn’t cover off-web factors. To understand factors relating to off-page, please see our additional editorial.
‘On-Page’ SEO
It’s possible to change the pages of your website to make them ‘friendly’ to the Search Engines. It’s not too complex – it just requires setting your website up the right way. 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! Actually, though on page work is straightforward it probably accounts for little. Indeed, it could be said to basically not have much influence at all. Many years ago, you used to be able to dupe the SE’s with lots of on-page factors. However, those days are long gone.
The only time that ‘on-page’ becomes important is when you have taken care of ‘off-page’ and have a lot of inbound ‘back-links’. If that’s the case, internal linking and a certain amount of on-page fine-tuning can reap rewards.
Take Counsel – Avoid doing SEO on keywords that have millions of listings. Take car insurance for instance. In Britain alone you’d get seventy million sites listed. When you’re just getting going, it’s not a great idea to face such huge competition!
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.
We can do much more with this. In point of fact, a phrase like Car insurance would massively set me back. I’d face fierce rivalry from wealthy opposition! Not a sensible option for anyone.
A precise description is much more valuable to us. We call them Long-tail phrases, as they’re made up of a few particularly chosen keywords. Depending on how competitive your market is, the phrases could be from 2 to 7 words long. Typically they will be 3 or 4 words long.
We like to start Search Engine Optimisation using terms that yield less than 500K. However, if the websites at the top of the listings aren’t well optimised, we may stretch to a higher count. In time our back links will grow. Then we’ll get a better rating on some of the bigger yielding phrases. With some effort, it will be possible to have a stab at the big ones within a year. This is a nicely targeted approach. We’re after the people who are really looking to buy, so we go for phrases that convert well.
Your home page isn’t the only place for back-links. Spread them liberally around your website. This technique is referred to as Deep Linking. For example, build links to the pages that group products. That’s because pages like this generally have links to several individual pages. So don’t limit the back links to one page. Google and the other SE’s are looking more and more at how individual pages on your site are listed and treated.