Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the science of driving qualified traffic to a website via the organic listings on a search engine results page (SERP). Generally the higher a site appears in the search results, the more visitors it will receive.

Search engines use ‘spiders’ or ‘web crawlers’ to find pages for their search results. Search engine spiders look at a variety of factors when crawling a website. Not every page on your website will be indexed by the search engines.

SEO considers how search engines work and what keywords people are searching for. Most people turn to an internet search engine as their first stop for information required (few will search past the first page of results). Never assume that you know which keywords people are using. It’s our experience that it’s not what you would first expect. Industry terms are not always what is used by the searching public.

Ideally your site has been broken down into niche segments, allowing a single page per subject, service or product. Each page should be optimised for the segment that you’re targeting, so that each page becomes its own homepage. SEO should be incorporated into your web site development strategy. The term ‘search engine friendly’ is used to describe website designs that have been optimised for search engine exposure.

Content is king. Your website must have relevant content with a clear message, in order to build its credibility and to have an impact.

Very few people really know the ins and outs of how the search engine results are determined. The make-up of the underlying algorithms for each search engine and the order in which the search results appear is the secret sauce. We know most of how it works, but not all of it.

There are no costs associated with appearing organically on a search results page, as opposed to pay per click (sponsored links) advertising. SEO is affordable and very effective.

Meta Elements

Meta elements are also known as meta, meta tags, metadata and metatext. These consist of a title, description and keywords. The title and description are what you see when an organic listing is shown. The right meta elements on each page of your web site will bring you more traffic.

Link Building

Link building is a vital component of your SEO strategy.

• Submit yourself to relevant, well ranking directories.
• Make your content worthy of other sites wanting to link to you.
• More relevant links (link juice) = improved PR (page rank) and organic (free) traffic to your site.
• Link building should never stop. It’s an ongoing strategy for keeping your site relevant.

White Hat SEO or Black Hat SEO?

Just like an old movie where the hero wears white and the villain wears black, so it is with SEO. A Black Hat SEO uses methods such as ‘link farms’ and ‘keyword stuffing’ to improve your rankings, when in fact this will often degrade the relevance of the search results. The search engines actively look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them. If you use these techniques, your site could end up temporarily or permanently banned.

Be very wary of anyone who promises you a page one position for any keyword phrase. There are too many variables at play to make that type of guarantee.

 

Talk to us today about optimising your website.