Search Engine Optimisation In Detail

SEO is an evolving study of the factors which search engines use to ‘rank’ you in their natural listings.

‘Natural’ search listings are the main lists of results that come up when you search for something. Such listings are not part of the paid advertising section. On the major Search Engines, you’ll see a box at the top, and a column down the right hand side. These are the paid adverts. Naturally listed adverts have been taken directly from the index. The order of each site is determined by its ‘importance’ and relevance to the keyword.

Of course, we would like to be as high as possible on page one. We’re unlikely to get noticed if we’re number 8 on the tenth page! It’s impossible to know about all the SE’s rank determining factors. 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.

There are two sides to SEO: ‘On-Page’ factors & ‘Off-Page’ factors. Geography and demography are also factors that influence page ranking. 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.

That might sound like gobbledy-gook, but don’t be alarmed!

It’s very easy to control on-page factors. But to be quite honest, they have the least relevance to your ranking these days. To be blunt, some would say it hardly has any effect at all. It used to be possible to ‘trick’ the Search Engines with on-page factors several years ago. That hasn’t been possible for a long time though.

On-Page can still be important though if Off-Page has been taken care of. When that’s happened, on-page factors can be optimised.

Some Words Of Caution…

Do not START to SEO with phrases that yield millions of results. In a search for ‘Car Insurance’ on Google in the UK for example, you would find around 70 million results. Anyone can see it’s not wise to try and compete with 70 million other pages when you’re just starting out!

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 would have a far better chance of getting ranked for that phrase quickly than I would for just ‘car insurance’. In actual fact, it takes very deep pockets to get a premier listing for a term like ‘car insurance’. My competition would be the huge corporations. 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.