Search Engine Optimisation - SEO
Organic search engine optimization or SEO is the process of improving the prominence of your website on the search engines in competition with those of your peers or competitors whilst at the same time ensuring that the user experience of the site is coherent and positive.
There was a time a number of years ago when it was common practice in some quarters to make the home page as long as humanly possible and stuff it with keywords and phrases over and over again in pursuit of that page 1 ranking. It did actually work as a basis for getting on page 1, however the user perceptions by and large did not generate conversions.
To a good extent the website content is key, with a focus on meta tags, titles and description and the actual public facing content so that people who are searching for your products, services or topics find your website.
The objective is to attract specific traffic towards your website by making it more prominent in search engine results using specific targeted keywords.
SEO For good indexation on Search Engines
In actual fact what Organic SEO is about is educating the search engines so that they index your website accurately in the free listings as opposed to paying for results on a fee basis or on a pay per click basis like Google Adwords.
The search engines have a job to do to bring the most accurate listings of websites specific to your search terms so they will probably list your website, but for instance if you are looking for an electrician in London then the search term "electricians in London" will yield around 12 million results.
It doesn't mean that there are 12 million electricians, but there are 12 million reference points out there and a certain website is in no. 1 spot and some website is occupying the twelve millionth spot.
SEO requires Clarity
It has to be recognised that each person searching the web goes on a journey if they don't find what they want immediately and this basically consists of refining the search so that the original search request of:
"electricians in London"
may actually end up as
"NICEIC approved domestic electrical contractors in Dulwich"
which still generates a healthy 86,900 results at the time of writing.
So if you run a London wide electrical contractors company or are a Dulwich based fully qualified electrician, your website plan and strategy may well be different and the content and layout will not be the same, but your rankings can well be similar and at the top of the search engines if you do it well.
What will your SEO Strategy Promote?
Prior to getting your website created it is very useful to start thinking about the content;
- What it is your are offering
- Who it is targeted at
- Who you do not want to entertain
- What is geographic radius of operation
- If it is online retail are you shipping to the UK, Europe or worldwide
- What is the market and or market segment
Having this information will help you to best position your business and help your SEO expert or web designer determine how best to build the website to achieve the objective and give you a good return for your available budget.
What will we achieve from SEO?
Perhaps the most Important aspect of SEO is to establish what the business objectives and goals are, from which point an SEO strategy, it's parameters and budget can be established.
It may be that for an existing website, the recommendations drawn from a site SEO analysis may suggest structural amendments to the website or even a fresh start.
For a new website the SEO will have an influence on the design process.
Competitor analysis is undertaken, after all, they will be assessing you and companies change, merge and engage marketeers as well, so it is important to maintain that awareness.
The second key aspect of the SEO strategy is to establish benchmarks and from there to measure the process, the traffic and analyse customer behaviour on the website, then review and update the strategy.
Page 1 on Google and Converting leads
What next:
The potential of the website is recognised, the website has been launched or revamped and the website optimisation is underway.
It is important to maximise on your investment in time, as much as money.
Regular scheduled updates and content reviews contribute enormously to regular indexation by the search engines and to converting potential customers who can see that you have consistently developed, completed projects, updated products, added testimonials and are generally positively communicating.
Will it be done in-house, will somebody have it as part of their job specification to ensure continuity ?
Should it be outsourced entirely so that all content is applied on a planned basis?
Click here for some website business basics to increase the rankings of your website on the search engine indexes on your blog.