Search engine optimisation, marketing and promotion - SEO

Promoting your website on the search engines through site optimisation...

Having your site listed high up in the rankings on the major search engines can undoubtedly increase the number of visitors and consequently your turnover and profit.

Dispelling search engine myths
Let's get a few things straight from the start as you may have heard or read a lot already about search engine optimisation, promotion and marketing. No one can guarantee you a particular search engines position (except pay-per-click), no one has a 'special relationship with Google', no one can instantly 'get you listed next week' and anyone who makes any promises or guarantees along these lines is best avoided!

What I do and don't do
I target the organic, free-to-list search engines such as Google, where the position of a website in the rankings for a particular keyword or phrase largely depends on how well the site's been optimised for that term. I don't make any guarantees or promises, but do the best possible using various tools and my knowledge of current search engine criteria. I follow search engine optimisation guidelines and avoid any optimisation practices that could be interpreted as spamming. Over-optimising a site is avoided too as this can lead to search engine penalties or even getting blacklisted.

How these search engines work
They do automated searches of the web, usually once a month; this is called a web crawl or spidering. They look at all sites found, following internal and external links. The position in the rankings for a particular word or phrase depends on often repeated words in the page text and coding tags and many other factors too. This varies between different search engines which all use different and constantly changing criteria.

The first twenty positions for relevant keywords are often on the first or second pages of a search result and many people will look no further.

How I can help get your site promoted with the search engines.

So you now have your website, but what about the visitors? Unless the site is optimised for the search engines, many potential visitors will not find it. It's a bit like producing a batch of advertising brochures and then not distributing them!

All websites I construct are designed to be 'search engine friendly'. That means the search engines should be able to transverse and index the site without problem. Unfortunately, having your site indexed doesn't automatically mean a position high up in the rankings, that comes through optimising the site for the search engines.

Search engine optimisation involves a number of processes including:

• Ensuring a site is search engine friendly
• Identification of keywords likely to attract the most visitors
• Keyword density building on pages
• Keywords on navigation links
• Page coding tags
• Site mapping
• Link popularity building
• Search engine submissions

Increasing your business
In addition, there's a need to identify a goal on your website, ie what is its main purpose, what do you want visitors to do? This could be making a purchase on an e-commerce site, or collecting visitor data via an enquiry form, or simply providing key information to the visitor. Whatever the goal is, it's important to 'funnel' newly arrived site visitors to the key page(s) - thus maximising your site's potential for new business. See my page on effective websites.

To give the search engines enough 'fodder', all sites should contain a minimum of six content filled pages with at least 200 words on each to be suitable for effective optimisation.

I provide two levels of search engine optimisation:

Plan 1:

• Check/remove any search engine barriers from site*
• Identify up to four relevant keywords
• Optimise up to four site pages
• Add keyword page linking between these pages
• Build in keywords to site coding tags
• Advice on how to gain relevant links into your site
• Install site statistics (where possible, depends on hosting)

Plan 1 should be considered as a 'shove in the right direction'.

Plan 2:

• Check/remove any search engine barriers from site*
• Identify up to six relevant keywords
• Optimise up to six site pages
• Add keyword page linking between these pages
• Build in keywords to site coding tags
• Add a Site Map page
• Research and provide a list of suitable web directories (linking)
• Install site statistics (where possible)
• Provide search engine positions reports in the top six engines for the next six months at two month intervals

Plan 2 is more like a 'kick in the right direction'.

*If this involves major reconstruction work, for example taking a site out of frames, an extra cost will be necessary.
Some existing sites may not be suitable for optimisation, eg a site built in Flash.

Combined Plan 1 and 2:
For clients with a larger marketing budget, both the above plans can be combined for an even more aggressive website promotion campaign! Up to ten words are identified and up to ten pages optimised. In addition, I submit your site to the Open Directory (DMOZ) and provide monthly position reports for six months.

Plan 1 and 2 combined is akin to 'flooring the accelerator'!

Some notes...

Selecting the right keywords
Choosing keywords that are very relevant to your business and that people are actually using to search with is very important. Identifying these words using web tools is time consuming, but time well spent - it's wasted if the chosen words are not often searched with, even if relevant to your site. Also wasted if half a million other sites are targeting the same term - many will have bigger budgets.

Keyword selection hypothetical example
A catering service provider may supply food to the corporate sector for business meetings. Relevant words could be 'corporate' and 'catering'. However, if twice as many people were actually searching with words like 'business' and 'food', optimising your site for these words could potentially bring you twice as many visitors!

The site placement in the rankings is governed by the number of sites found also using the same search keyword or phrase. If your site search comes up out of 500,000 others, then there is very little chance of getting a top 10 position! At the end of the day, not everyone can be number 1. On the other hand, if it's out of a few thousand then there's much more chance of a high position, especially as much of the competition may not have optimised their site.

Link popularity building
Relevant incoming linking from other sites is considered important for good search engine positions as the site is then perceived to be more important. However, link building can be a very time consuming (and hence expensive) task involving researching suitable sites to approach to swap link with and the ongoing checking to ensure linking is maintained. It gets even more so if pages and forms are set-up on site to attract linking partners.

I've found that the time is better spent in concentrating on good optimisation of your own site and obtaining a handful of links from high profile, well ranked and strictly relevant sites. Getting listed in relevant, good quality web directories is worthwhile too. This is far better than having hundreds of links from largely marginal sites and then having to maintain a sprawling link directory on your site.

Search engine submissions
It's not usually necessary to submit a site to the major search engines as a well optimised site will be found anyway. Submitting will not influence positions, only make an engine aware it exists.

Under Plan 1 and 2 combined I submit to DMOZ, the Open Directory, as a site listing here is given a greater weighting by major engines. The chosen category has to be carefully selected, the listing title and description has to be carefully worded to include your keywords and be objectively written - essential in not only maximising the chances of getting a DMOZ listing, but also with a higher ranking in the major engines.

A Yahoo listing is highly desirable too if your advertising budget allows, again a listing here is favoured by many other engines. I can advise and submit to Yahoo if required.

It should be remembered that the results of optimisation will not be instant, it will take at least until the next web crawl for changes to become apparent and often several months should be allowed. It's usual for positions to fluctuate from month-to-month too.

Submitting to 1000's of engines
You may have received e-mails offering to submit your site to many thousands of search engines. Even if there were that many, the vast majority will be highly specialised or regional and hence irrelevant. Of the main general engines there are really only perhaps a dozen that the majority of web surfers use and many are interrelated so optimising a site for a handful of these will also show up in others too.
One thing to be wary of is the scam that invites you to submit to 1000's of engines - all this does is submit to 1000's of spamming mailing lists which will only result in a vast increase in spam and the possibility of DOS attacks!

What about paid for listings?
This type of site promotion suits larger businesses with much larger budgets so I don't offer pay-per-click (PPC) services.

Details for your interest: The pay-per-click (PPC) search engines charge you your agreed bid every time somebody clicks your site listing - the more you bid, the higher the position. Disadvantages are having to constantly monitor your bid to ensure you're not paying over the odds, eg if a rival bidder drops out. Conversely, another bidder may up his bid pushing you down the list. Click fraud is a growing problem and PPC costs tend to be rising. The main advantage with PPC is that it's instant, no waiting for a new site to appear and climb the rankings.

Site statistics
These can report on which search engines are bringing in visitors and also which search words they used - useful to check the results of site optimisation and identify any further optimisation possibilities. Site stats also provide the day/date/time of visits, most popular pages, details about a visitor's computer (user agent) and ISP.