Search Engine Optimisation In Detail
Internet Marketing Services, Search Engine Markerting Services
SEO is essentially a constantly evolving study of what factors the search engines take into account when they 'rank' you in their natural search listings.
When we search for anything, up come the natural search lists. These do not include the paid listings. Generally, the paid advertising is on the right of the screen. A box at the top of the page will also contain paid ads. All the others are 'naturally' listed from the Search Engine's index. Search Engines use algorithms to determine a website's relevancy and importance. This is how they decide on which order to place them in.
Of course, we would like to be as high as possible on page one. No-one's going to find us if we're listed on page seven. We can't know for sure about all the criteria Google and the like use to rank us. 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 one side you have SE's like Google deliberately filing technology patents in many different areas. Causing much mystification about their methods! On the other hand, there's Search Engine Optimisation. This uses empirical testing and measuring of various factors to determine which ones are the most important.
The objective is to maximise both 'on-page' and 'off-page' optimisation. Off-web criteria also play a part in SE listings, (e.g. demographics). This doesn't come under the remit of SEO though. For a full discussion of Off-Page factors, please refer to our other article on this subject.
'On-Page' SEO
This involves making your web pages 'friendlier' to the Search Engines. This is quite straight-forward - it simply requires correctly setting up your site. For instance: Seeding keywords in suitable places and at the correct density; internal-linking, using H1 & H2 header tags, and to a lesser extent, using meta-tags.
It doesn't matter if all that sounds very confusing.
The bottom-line is, that while it is the easiest to control, it has the LEAST affect on your ranking. 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.
On-Page can still be important though if Off-Page has been taken care of. If that's the case, internal linking and a certain amount of on-page fine-tuning can reap rewards.
Some Words Of Caution...
Don't try hugely listed phrases and keywords in your early attempts at Search Engine Optimisation. The phrase 'car insurance' yields 70,000,000 results in the United Kingdom alone! It's not rocket science to realise that competing in this area wouldn't be productive.
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.
I could expect to get ranked far more easily for the longer phrase. In actual fact, it takes very deep pockets to get a premier listing for a term like 'car insurance'. I would actually be competing with the insurance conglomerates! So not a great idea - especially, in fact, when there are much better ways to go about it.
In fact, what we really need are terms that more specifically reflect our product or service. These 'long tail' phrases might contain a number of specific keywords. It depends on your competition, but long-tail searches can be up to 6 or 7 words. Typically they will be 3 or 4 words long.
In general, our recommendation is to begin SEO'ing with keyword phrases that reveal fewer than 500,000 results. (There are occasions when we might accept a higher yield figure at the start - when the top entries are not well optimised.) Then, as we build back-links, we'll automatically start to gain some ground on the bigger search phrases. If we've worked well, we can start hitting the bigger terms in a few months time. It's a much more targeted strategy. Frankly, we're only interested in the customers who are looking specifically for what we offer. There's much more chance these people will buy!
Don't just limit building back links to your website's home page - link them up to various sub pages as well. Google and the other Search Engines like this 'deep linking'. Category or Product Group pages are a good example. They often have links to several other sub-pages about individual products. Do not simply build links to your web site's home page. The SE's are becoming increasingly interested in how a site's individual pages are listed.
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