Fundamentally, SEO is the study of how Search Engines organise sites on their organic search lists. These lists are the main results that are shown when you do a search. They are not to be confused with the Pay per Click entries. The paid listings are typically in a yellow section at the top of the page, and in a column down the right hand side. All the rest have naturally been put into position. The Search Engines look at a site's relevancy and value when establishing its position in the hierarchy.
Naturally our target is the top of the first page! We're unlikely to get noticed if we're number 8 on the tenth page! We can't know for sure about all the criteria Google and the like use to rank us. They keep it a closely guarded secret!
So, over the years a complete industry has grown up around this. And so we have on one side Google and Bing purposely patenting different technologies. Causing much mystification about their methods! And then you have an industry built around SEO. 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. In addition there are geographic and demographic factors, but SEO cannot control these. (Off-Page optimisation is examined in an additional feature.)
SEO 'On-Page'
On-Page SEO is all about changes you can make directly to a site to make it more Search Engine 'friendly'. It involves 'correctly' configuring your website. For example: Internal-linking, using H1 & H2 header tags, seeding keywords at the correct density (and in appropriate places,) and to some lesser degree, using meta-tags.
If all that is complete double-dutch to you, then don't worry - you're not alone! It's very easy to control on-page factors. But to be quite honest, they have the least relevance to your ranking these days. In truth, many argue its relevance has disappeared altogether! In the past it was easy to affect Search Engines with on-page SEO. 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. In that circumstance, some On-Page tweaks and internal links can have an impact.
A Few Handy Pointers... Don't try hugely listed phrases and keywords in your early attempts at Search Engine Optimisation. For instance, if you typed into a Search Engine the term Car insurance, seventy million results would be listed for the UK alone. That's a huge number to pitch yourself against.
And Yet - The phrase 'Southampton Car Insurance' only brings in three hundred thousand. (Presuming that was my market). Though still large, this is a much more manageable figure.
The extended phrase makes all the difference. Trying to get a ranking for CAR INSURANCE would take a huge amount of time and money. My competition would be the huge corporations. Not the best way to do things at all!
In fact, what we really need are terms that more specifically reflect our product or service. They're known as long tail searches, because they'll have several keywords. Phrases can be as many as seven words, depending on your competition. Most are about 3 - 4 keywords.
We like to start Search Engine Optimisation using terms that yield less than 500K. However, if the websites at the top of the listings aren't well optimised, we may stretch to a higher count. We'll automatically move up the ratings for the more popular search terms as we gain more back-links. Assuming everything goes to plan, we'll hit the popular phrases in three to twelve months. This is a nicely targeted approach. We're looking for people who want to buy, so we use terms with a commercial intention!
Back Links should be shared between several web pages on your site and not just restricted to the Homepage. We call this 'deep-linking' - and Google in particular likes this. Try back-linking product group pages. They very frequently link up to a range of sub-pages, so driving appropriate terms to them can be very worthwhile. Thus - don't restrict the back links to just one page. The managing and listing of individual sub-pages is receiving growing attention from the major Search Engines.
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