SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It's a term common to just about everyone nowadays. Anyone with a website desires their website to appear on the very first page of google for their keyword or key phrase. This worthy goal is becoming progressively difficult as thousands more websites are made and indexed each day.
It is also a field that changes quickly, as Search Engines – like Google continue to shift the goal posts while they modify and improve the way they rank pages. Further these ranking algorithms are carefully guarded secrets, so the precise location of said goal posts, aren’t actually known by anyone outside Google.
However there is a lot that is known. What I am going to concentrate on in this article are the fundamentals, and this article is targeted at the non-technical website owner, enthusiastic about the essentials.
The field of SEO is generally split into two distinct subjects. “ON Page” and “OFF Page” SEO.
ON Page SEO
ON page SEO is the easy part. Its about tweaking the information of your website, so that Search Engines can look on your own site in the most favorable light possible. The following list includes the most crucial aspects of On Page SEO. If you don’t know what all these terms mean, that’s okay, but the person that develops your website should definitely be on top of this..
- Have a keyword suitable title tag for each page.
- Have a keyword appropriate description meta tag for every page.
- Utilize H1, H2, H3 & tags throughout your pages to spotlight the key content of each page, and underline those keywords to Google.
- Have plain text links internally to all your pages. (A footer is useful for this)
- Include keywords, in the page path. eg www.site.com/services/keyword/
- Include keywords in alt tags for each image, so Google attributes value to your site’s images.
- Have a content loaded site full of useful info for people, this will normally create a keyword rich website.
- The larger your site the better. The more content google can index the better. A great way to add to your site over time is through a blog. (like this one) This also provides useful industry information to your viewers.
-Blog writing also keeps your website fresh, update frequency is also something Google considers.
If you don't know about any of this stuff, that isn't a problem. There are many companies out there. One example would be Icreate Solutions. They are known for there innovative designs.
OFF Page SEO
OFF page SEO is a tricky one. One of the primary ways Google measures your site’s importance vs all the other sites out there, is by how many other sites link to your one. If your site has 200 incoming links, and your competitor has 2, all other things being equal, Google will consider your site far more relevant and list it higher.
Getting other sites to link to your own, isn’t that simple and is one of the crucial activities SEO companies traditionally offer. Commonly called “link building”. Google doesn’t like to be tricked though, and the old techniques of building a large number of incoming links automagically via networks of spammy websites, no longer works. Infact you would be penalised for this. Quality SEO companies do not engage in this activity. Google now measures all inbound themselves for their quality and importance.
A great way to increase inbound links, is to publish quality content out there on the interweb, with links back to your website. This might be on Social Media, or websites like articlebase. com, squidoo, youtube, digg and so forth
Also posting useful (non spammy) comments on other quality websites, with a discreet backlink – is a great strategy.
This is obviously a lot of work, a good idea is to take a long term approach at off page SEO, and make frequent small hits at it. Or engage a quality SEO company to assist with an off page strategy.
Social Media & Content Creation I mentioned before its good to have a large site, and even more important to have a very freshly updated site. Well a good way to do that is by using your blog. Write an article weekly. Make it helpful. Google will like that content is changing each time it pays a visit, with time the indexable content of your website will continue to grow and develop!
The other thing which is cool about blog pages, is they act as new entry points to your site. If you write a blog reviewing the new xyz widget your business sells, and an xyz widget is a relatively unique item. There is a chance your article may just show top on google for a search of xyz widget. With time, blog pages can have a large impact on your websites traffic.
Make the most out from the fantastic article you’ve just written, and hit your Social Media channels, with a quick excerpt along with a link back to your blog post. Get some eyes reading it.
Also your site needs Social Media buttons. Allowing visitors to Facebook like, Google plus, tweet or even Pinterest pages. This is good because;
- It helps spread the word about your website.
- It is widely believed that social measures, will probably be used more and more by Search Engine algorithms. Particularly the Google Plus button. A site with 20 Google pluses, will rank higher than a site with none. Apparently this is not happening yet, however it is likely just a matter of when, so preferable to start building some social recommendations today.
The PPC option
PPC stands for pay-per-click. It is paid advertising. PPC's are quite advantageous for people with like real estate advertising. Google’s version of this is Google Adwords. Many sites, that do not list on page 1 organically in a Google can still bring a reliable stream of traffic to their site through paid advertising. You can advertise for as little as a $1 a day, and can be scaled up and down as required. It can be a good supplement to your SEO efforts to get the phone ringing now, while your site climbs the stairs of Google.
Summary
SEO is a journey. The days of getting to number 1 easily are gone, there's just too much competitors. You need a site that is built right, that is number 1. But you also have to commit to a long term strategy of quality content publishing, social interaction, and quality backlink. It is a big job, but like any big task with time it can simply be managed with lots of small consistent efforts.
Also the more you do it, the easier it gets.
It is also a field that changes quickly, as Search Engines – like Google continue to shift the goal posts while they modify and improve the way they rank pages. Further these ranking algorithms are carefully guarded secrets, so the precise location of said goal posts, aren’t actually known by anyone outside Google.
However there is a lot that is known. What I am going to concentrate on in this article are the fundamentals, and this article is targeted at the non-technical website owner, enthusiastic about the essentials.
The field of SEO is generally split into two distinct subjects. “ON Page” and “OFF Page” SEO.
ON Page SEO
ON page SEO is the easy part. Its about tweaking the information of your website, so that Search Engines can look on your own site in the most favorable light possible. The following list includes the most crucial aspects of On Page SEO. If you don’t know what all these terms mean, that’s okay, but the person that develops your website should definitely be on top of this..
- Have a keyword suitable title tag for each page.
- Have a keyword appropriate description meta tag for every page.
- Utilize H1, H2, H3 & tags throughout your pages to spotlight the key content of each page, and underline those keywords to Google.
- Have plain text links internally to all your pages. (A footer is useful for this)
- Include keywords, in the page path. eg www.site.com/services/keyword/
- Include keywords in alt tags for each image, so Google attributes value to your site’s images.
- Have a content loaded site full of useful info for people, this will normally create a keyword rich website.
- The larger your site the better. The more content google can index the better. A great way to add to your site over time is through a blog. (like this one) This also provides useful industry information to your viewers.
-Blog writing also keeps your website fresh, update frequency is also something Google considers.
If you don't know about any of this stuff, that isn't a problem. There are many companies out there. One example would be Icreate Solutions. They are known for there innovative designs.
OFF Page SEO
OFF page SEO is a tricky one. One of the primary ways Google measures your site’s importance vs all the other sites out there, is by how many other sites link to your one. If your site has 200 incoming links, and your competitor has 2, all other things being equal, Google will consider your site far more relevant and list it higher.
Getting other sites to link to your own, isn’t that simple and is one of the crucial activities SEO companies traditionally offer. Commonly called “link building”. Google doesn’t like to be tricked though, and the old techniques of building a large number of incoming links automagically via networks of spammy websites, no longer works. Infact you would be penalised for this. Quality SEO companies do not engage in this activity. Google now measures all inbound themselves for their quality and importance.
A great way to increase inbound links, is to publish quality content out there on the interweb, with links back to your website. This might be on Social Media, or websites like articlebase. com, squidoo, youtube, digg and so forth
Also posting useful (non spammy) comments on other quality websites, with a discreet backlink – is a great strategy.
This is obviously a lot of work, a good idea is to take a long term approach at off page SEO, and make frequent small hits at it. Or engage a quality SEO company to assist with an off page strategy.
Social Media & Content Creation I mentioned before its good to have a large site, and even more important to have a very freshly updated site. Well a good way to do that is by using your blog. Write an article weekly. Make it helpful. Google will like that content is changing each time it pays a visit, with time the indexable content of your website will continue to grow and develop!
The other thing which is cool about blog pages, is they act as new entry points to your site. If you write a blog reviewing the new xyz widget your business sells, and an xyz widget is a relatively unique item. There is a chance your article may just show top on google for a search of xyz widget. With time, blog pages can have a large impact on your websites traffic.
Make the most out from the fantastic article you’ve just written, and hit your Social Media channels, with a quick excerpt along with a link back to your blog post. Get some eyes reading it.
Also your site needs Social Media buttons. Allowing visitors to Facebook like, Google plus, tweet or even Pinterest pages. This is good because;
- It helps spread the word about your website.
- It is widely believed that social measures, will probably be used more and more by Search Engine algorithms. Particularly the Google Plus button. A site with 20 Google pluses, will rank higher than a site with none. Apparently this is not happening yet, however it is likely just a matter of when, so preferable to start building some social recommendations today.
The PPC option
PPC stands for pay-per-click. It is paid advertising. PPC's are quite advantageous for people with like real estate advertising. Google’s version of this is Google Adwords. Many sites, that do not list on page 1 organically in a Google can still bring a reliable stream of traffic to their site through paid advertising. You can advertise for as little as a $1 a day, and can be scaled up and down as required. It can be a good supplement to your SEO efforts to get the phone ringing now, while your site climbs the stairs of Google.
Summary
SEO is a journey. The days of getting to number 1 easily are gone, there's just too much competitors. You need a site that is built right, that is number 1. But you also have to commit to a long term strategy of quality content publishing, social interaction, and quality backlink. It is a big job, but like any big task with time it can simply be managed with lots of small consistent efforts.
Also the more you do it, the easier it gets.
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