Teach Yourself Search Engine Optimisation

Hiring a search enginptimisation/marketing agency can be a costly exercise - often beyond the budget of small businesses. However the web is full of information on how to apply the basic techniques to your website, but this mostly involves reading lots of technical articles, following meandering threads on a search engine forum or wordy articles like the one below.With this in mind, Search Engine Serious are happy to announce a different way of learning that is totally free and easily absorbed though the use of online video.Just sit back, relax and educate yourself without getting a headache while you learn.Click on the category on the right hand side of the page which is most relevant to your needs - Pay Per Click Advertising or SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

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If you still feel the need to read a little more information before watching the videos, try this short primer.

 

DIY SEO

There is no magic secret to search engine optimisation, no sneaky tricks that will catapult a website to the top of the search engine results pages. Quite simply, a well built website, with good navigation and lots of content, can be optimised to bring more targeted visitors and, hopefully, that visitor will convert into a client.The basic constituent parts to a search engine optimisation campaign can be broken down as follows:

• Spiderable Navigation
• Quality Content
• Keyword Research
• On-page Search Engine Optimisation
• Inbound Links

By employing the following guidelines to your website you will dramatically increase the numbers of visitors to your site.Spiderable NavigationYour site needs a navigation system that allows easy spidering of all your pages. The fashion for fancy javascript roll-over navigation can hinder your search engine marketing plans - if you must have all the “bells and whistles” on your site then provide a text link on the home page to an html text-based site map. This will ensure that the search engine spider finds all the content your site has to offer. If the site has more than 100 pages, break the site map down to keep the number of links on each of the pages to less than 100 links.A good way to start this mapping of the site is to run Xenu Link Sleuth on it. Xenu is a free program that you can download onto your computer that, when run it on a site, will find any broken links that you can fix. The added value with Xenu is that it creates a valid html site map which can be copied onto your site. This ensures no pages are missed when the search engines come to visit.If your site is dynamically generated, then consider keeping the parameters short and few in numbers.Quality ContentIf your site is mainly image based, you will be very hard pressed to rank well in the results pages of the search engines - image based sites do not allow the spiders to retrieve information in same way that they would retrieve information in text. Search engines read words. Never forget those four words when building or optimising a website.In Google’s Webmaster Help Centre it states, “Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do.”Create useful, information-rich content that will educate your visitors as to what your company or organisation offers.Whilst some people are put off by long text-based pages, consider this; someone has found your site and wishes to know more than the very basics of your subject, they love what you have and want to know more. The trick here is to design pages where all the salient points are bullet pointed above the fold. A creative designer can also help with this important part of the page. By adding colour and graphics (even a Flash movie if you insist) to the top of the page you can engage your viewer and communicate your offer quickly and accurately. If your page appears to have what the visitor is looking for they are going to want lots more information and they will read the whole of the page.Pay special attention to your home page - you need to mention all aspects of your business or organisation, with links through to interior pages that explain in depth how you can be of service to your visitors. So, a picture of your new £2m factory with the words Click Here To Enter just isn’t going to do the trick. Put vanity to one side and think in terms of profit.With any images you include on your pages, give them an”alt” description, this will help any visually impaired people who use a text-to-speech browser to understand the page better - and also give the search engines more information.Make your site an “authority” on its subject. Publish as much information as you can, technical pages, etc to draw visitors and hopefully attract links from other websites that wish to give their readers more information.Keyword ResearchThis often overlooked part of the search engine optimisation process can literally make or break your site with the search engines. Sit down and draw up a list of the likely phrases someone would search for if they were looking for your product, the words you would use if you were researching your competitors and did not know the company names. If it is some sort of clothing for instance, you would not expect a person to type the word clothing in a search engine to find what they are after - they are more likely to use two, three or four word phrases such as mens silk shirt, or womens leather trousers. Recent figures tell us that the average surfer finally finds what they are looking for after typing in three word searches.When you have compiled your list of search terms go to Wordtracker (there’s a free trial) or Yahoo’s Keyword Assistant which is also free to use. Type your search terms into the search field and it will return numbers of people searching for that term in a given time period. These resources also make suggestions as to other similar phrases and their popularity. These are accurate figures as to how many times a phrase is searched for. Then go to one of the major search engines and make these searches, note the number of competing pages on the results pages to give you a rough idea of how competitive the phrases are. Obviously you need to target the phrases that have a high number of searches but a low number of competing pages. Rough and ready, yes - but without some sort of research your search engine optimisation efforts may come to nothing.When you have identified your main keyphrases, built content on the site around these phrases to inform and educate your visitors.On-page Search Engine OptimisationThere is not a lot you can do here - and what you can do is mostly common sense. You need to promote a keyphrase per page - that keyphrase needs to appear in:

• the title of the page
• the meta description (forget the meta keywords tag, it is all but ignored by the major search engines)
• in headers on the page
• in alt descriptions of any images that are relevant to the keyphrase
• and in the body text - a few times at the top of the page and once towards the very end of the page

Try to build pages with at least 500 words of body text, the search engines love this and it increases your chances as being perceived as an authority site.Inbound LinksOne of the single most important things you can do is look for sites that will link to you. The number and quality of inbound links is vital, especially with Google, the search engine that commands 70 to 80% of all searches on the web. You can start with DMOZ, the directory which supplies the data for Google’s directory. DMOZ, or the Open Directory Project as it is also known, is a vast directory staffed by volunteer editors who ensure that all sites listed meet editorial quality guidelines. Other major directories are Yahoo, JoeAnt, GoGuides & MSN bCentral.Finally I quote from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines a list of search engine optimisation techiques frowned upon by the search engines. When you receive unsolicited email or are cold-called by companies offering “… top ten positions for your website for a few hndred pounds..” it’s more than likely that the SEO company are employing some or all of these tricks. If you are caught, your site can be banned from the index - and that’s not funny!Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

This article is courtesy of Search Engine Serious, search engine optimisation and marketing online professionals.© Copyright 2006-2008 Search Engine Serious. All rights reserved.