This brief overview takes you through the essentials of Search Engine Optimisation – also known as SEO for short. First, let's clarify what SEO means:
SEO is the process of tweaking (optimising) the contents of your website to improve its appeal and visibility to the search engines. When someone types in a search term in Google for example, how likely is it that your website will come up at the top of the list? SEO strategy combines a number of elements which, when applied consistently, generate increased search rankings which in turn generates more traffic to your website.
Use of Keywords
When working on your sites search engine optimisation, forget fancy graphics and animations – search engines love to see keywords in the text of your pages. Although there is no clear cut rule, it is generally agreed that most search engines look for these when indexing your pages so it makes sense to incorporate relevant keywords into the copy of each page whilst still ensuring it reads smoothly. Tread carefully when working on your search engine optimisation – many search engines are getting wise to the over-use of keywords and if they see the same words coming up time after time, will actually penalise your site ! Plus your readers may click away, realising that the copy is blatantly stuffed with certain keywords. A professional copywriter may be the answer if you don't feel comfortable writing the content yourself.
Meta-Tags
There are several meta-tags that the search engines may look for. Firstly, the title – the actual name of each page. Secondly, the description – the one or two lines of text that appear alongside your link whenever your site comes up in an online search. And thirdly, keywords – embedded into the HTML code on your page. There is some debate regarding the importance of including keyword meta tags; Google does not take these into account (although other search engines do). The title and description on the other hand are vitally important and should contain your most relevant keywords.
Reciprocal links
Establishing links to and from other websites relevant to your industry or business can be a powerful and effective way of boosting your website rankings. It makes sense to have a clear linking strategy for your site – only link with sites that have a synergy with yours and ensure the links are always kept up to date (search engines don't like to see broken links). Every incoming link is effectively a ‘vote' that counts towards the overall popularity and hence page ranking of your website. A selection of links from other relevant sites gives many opportunities for qualified traffic to find your site. These can be achieved in a number of ways, one of them being using link exchanges. These must be used with caution, many bad neighbourhoods operate in this manner and can do more harm than good in some cases.
Summary
This overview is brief but offers an insight into the main areas of search engine optimisation or SEO. Maintaining a successful SEO programme is no easy task – it can be incredibly time-consuming and fraught with potentially damaging ‘trial and error' issues. To make it work effectively, it always pays to enlist the advice of a professional SEO specialist.
