Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation explained: What it is, how it works, how to do it, hints & tips, advice, useful resources.
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engine listings by increasing it’s chances of being ranked high in the results.
Recent research shows that over 80% of internet users regularly use search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others to find things they are looking for. That is an awful lot of free traffic that can potentially be directed to your site by the search engines.
What is the aim of Search Engine Optimisation?
The goal of search engine optimization is to have the website (or the page) appear high in the results when a desired search term is searched for. The higher your site appears in the list of results, the more chance there is of the viewer clicking on it, and the more visitors you will get.
How does Search Engine Optimisation work?
The methodology of search engine optimization is firstly to understand your visitors and know what they are looking for. Secondly, to use this understanding to develop a list of keywords that these visitors will be searching upon. Thirdly, to construct the site in such a way as to show the search engines that this site is very relevant to the viewer’s search terms and should therefore appear high in the results – ideally in position one.
TIP - Finding Keywords
The best way to find keywords for your site is a service called WordTracker.
Enter the general terms you are interested in and it will show you other related ones to consider. Better still, it shows how many people search for that term and how many competing results there are.
Take the free trial and then sign up for the full service. It's essential and it's worth it. Take the tour...
What are the problems?
The challenge of SEO, is brought about by the fact that everybody wants to be number one! With the vast size of the internet, the potential rewards that high search engine traffic can bring are enormous. In nearly every sphere, there are hundreds if not thousands of people, clamouring to get the coveted high rankings and trying all sorts of dirty tricks to try to tip the odds in their favour. A whole ‘get rich quick’ industry sprang up overnight, promising to deliver high search engine rankings in exchange for large amounts of cash. This industry is huge and there are now some genuine quality companies as well as complete shysters making all sorts of unrealistic promises. Guess which is in the majority?
The search engines themselves attract and keep users by providing them with the results they want. If users don’t get the results they are looking for, they will move to another search engine. The search engine companies’ whole value is in the quality of the results they deliver. Their over-riding objective in order to preserve what Google terms as ‘a quality user experience’ is to prevent manipulation of the results by people seeking to exploit them for their own commercial gain.
The search engine companies take constant active measures to defeat manipulation of their results. The people engaged in search engine optimisation (also called SEO's– Search Engine Optimisers) spend all their time trying to figure out what works now, as the search engines keep closing loopholes. It is a constant battle between the two and the ground changes every week. Only one thing is certain: the search engines always win. Any sites using nefarious techniques to manipulate their results will be penalized by being moved down the results or even removed altogether.
What is the best way to optimise search engine results?
Now that all the old tricks have been disabled, the only way to get good results in the search engines is to have good quality content, that is well-written and:
1. relevant to the user’s search terms
2. up-to-date (frequently updated)
3. referred to by others (incoming links)
and most importantly does not employ any underhand tactics (known as ‘spamming’) to artificially improve rankings. If you provide good content, and build your site correctly they will come, but it is a long-term exercise that may take months to bear fruit.
Through enormous and magnificent technology, the search engines now assess web sites in a similar way to humans. Just as you can tell if something is good quality, relevant and informative or a load of old rubbish designed to sell you something you don’t want, so can they. To help them, they also employ human reviewers to further improve the quality of the results. The best way to get good results in the search engines is to write as if you are writing for a person to read. Hang on, isn’t that what you should be doing anyway…?