What is SEO (search engine optimisation)?
SEO is the process of driving relevant traffic to a site from search engines.
There are three key basic steps for optimising your site.
- Keyword research: deciding what terms you should optimise your site for based on how many people search for them and how competitive they are.
- Onsite optimisation: building the chosen keywords and phrases into your site’s structure so that search engines know what your site is about.
- Link building: other sites linking to your site shows Google that they think your site is useful, so Google sees links to your site as a recommendation.
Keyword Research
A good place to start with your keyword research is to write down your top five products or services as well as five or six words and phrases that summarise your business.
Next you need to see whether people are actually searching for your selected keywords. There are many excellent keyword research tools online:
- The Keyword Tool in Google Adwords - Free
- Google Trends - Free
- Wordtracker – Paid
Onsite Optimisation
There are several elements that search engines look for when they visit your site. Some of the criteria are visible to human users and some are not.
NB Be careful not to sacrifice the needs of your human users for the sake of SEO.
- Page title:
this is the title that you can see at the top of your browser and that Google uses when it lists your site. - Meta description:
this is data that sits in the code of your site. It is used by search engines as the description below the title, but has very little actual impact on your ranking, so don’t stuff it with keywords, use it to sell your products to a human. - URL or website address:
for example, on a page selling brown walking boots, it is a good idea for your url to be something like: www.yoursite.com/brown-walking-boots - Image alt tags:
this is a way of tagging your images so people and Google bots, who can’t see the images, know what they’re of. This is more important from an accessibility point of view, so people using screen readers will receive a description of the image. - Headings and content:
the content on your page is very important. Google will look at the content and judge how useful your site will be for the user. The easiest way to get your content right is to create it for your user. - Site structure:
when Google’s bots visit your site they need to be able to find all of your pages easily. A logical structure makes it easier for them. - Menu items:
naming your categories and sections using your keywords is a good idea. Then when the bots visit your site and the see a menu item called clothing, which goes to a section called clothing they can be in no doubt what that section is about. - Page load speed:
this a relatively new criteria. Google has created this extremely handy tool for testing your page speed: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights Try testing your site on mobile too.
Link Building
This is where the hard work starts! Building links is the most important part of your SEO strategy. There’s no easy and quick way to build links, it is hard work and Google will now penalise you for using the old black hat SEO tricks.
Bad/low quality links
- Paid and free directory links.
- Links from article directory sites.
- Links from comments.
- Link farming.
Good quality links
- Links from blogs.
- Links from news sites.
- Links from magazine sites.
- Links from big and trusted websites.
The golden rule is, if the link looks unnatural then Google won’t like it.
The best way to get these links is to create great content on your site that people want to link to. It is important to use social media to share this content, it’s not often that content gets out onto the wider web by itself.
Another great way is to contact bloggers and writers and ask them to review your product or service. Most bloggers understand that you are asking them not only for the PR, but also for the link.