Search engines are the key to the internet, and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is all about getting noticed by the search engines. Part of the challenge of getting noticed by search engines is understanding what they are looking for, and letting them have it.
The goal for everyone on the internet is to get on page 1 of the search results. Since there are over 150 million websites around the world, it’s a challenging task to get there. Unsurprisingly, the search engine companies are very protective of the exact methods they use to rank websites.
All’s not lost though, because their goal is all the same: match a query to the most appropriate website. That means that your goal is to match the website to what you expect people to be looking for.
Search Engine Optimisation Top Tips:
- Make sure your content is relevant and well defined.
- Make sure your content contains the keywords people use to find you.
- Make sure your website is “search engine friendly” – that means text, and links.
- Make sure you have links from other websites.
Content optimisation
You should ensure that each page on your site is about one thing, rather than everything. Put simplistically, search engines count words on a page. The more a word is mentioned, the more important it is. Your pages should contain the words you think people are looking for. For example, that may be “Woking” and “Gardener”.
As with any marketing material, choosing the right text requires thought, and expertise. This is where Get up and Running can help because we have an in-house language expert who can help you create the best content for your site, making it more attractive to search engines.
Keyword optimisation
Computers are dumb. They think “optimisation” and “optimization” are really different words, when they mean exactly the same thing. The rule is to actually use the keywords you think customers may be using to find you. You will have to be less concise than you would like, it may mean repeating yourself, but it ensures that the search terms you want are actually found.
Search Engine friendly
Although a website with lots of graphics and animation looks good, it is rarely search engine friendly. Search engines love text, and they love links. We design all our sites to maximise the text content and have easy to follow links on every page. When you add a new page in the administration panel, it also creates a new link for your menu automatically.
Inward bound links
If lots of people recommend you, it’s a good indication that you are good at what you do. Search engines think the same. If lots of websites point to you – and both your sites are about the same thing – search engines rank you higher. It’s a good idea to encourage suppliers, partners and customers to link to your website.
Which are the best sites to be linked from? By far the best sites to have links from are government, academic, news and reference sites. In fact, any site that is already hugely popular. By having a link from one of these websites, you share in their popularity.
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