Planning for successful search engine optimisation
Success or failure for search engine optimisation actually depends on successfully completing the research process before you design the website. This falls into two areas – keyword and site linking analysis.
The first, keyword analysis, is the ability to look across multiple search engines for keywords being used by users to find products or services that a company offers – and you’ll be surprised the combinations of keywords that are being used. With this research you should also see which keywords are being used to find your competitor websites. Also look at the keyword phrases being used in your own in-site search (if you have a current website) as that is a great indicator as to what users want from your site and the ones to focus on in your SEO strategy.
The second, site linking analysis, begins with using tools to find all the sites that currently link to your website (if you have one). Then identify the websites that are competitive to yours and find out which sites are uniquely linking to them and not you. This gives you a list of sites to contact requesting that your site may be of interest to their website audience (sites linking to yours, especially quality sites with a high page rank, will work wonders for your search engine position).
The design process itself is then about structuring the site to be logical to a user journey ensuring that you use the keywords you identified in the research phase within the page content on a regular basis. Don’t overcook your usage of keywords, filling pages with your keywords will just make it uninteresting to your website visitor and the search engines are also intelligent enough to filter these out.
The actual visual design and copy tone is also critical to search engine optimisation. How many times have we clicked on a search link that a company has worked hard to place in organic listings or pay-per-click for the visitor to be presented with a website that is uninspiring and poorly designed.
A business approach to using flash technology
What should be in the minds of business today is not just search engine optimisation but also website accessibility. Not making your websites accessible to certain website visitors will leave you in breach of current W3C guidelines and Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) Legislation.
Therefore by designing and building a website that is accessible will also enable you to naturally create a website that is search engine optimised. And then you can use flash within the page content areas themselves to add interactivity when a business case has been identified – this is especially important for corporate websites.
However, for brands such as found in FMCG, creation of an accessible website can lose elements of the brand experience that website visitors are looking for. Therefore, in this particular instance, creation of a co-existing flash and accessible html-based website is good practice enabling you to cater for the needs of all your website visitors.
Combining pay-per-click and natural search listings
Pay-per-click is a great way for any business to invest and drive targeted, qualified traffic to a website. And of course you can also appear across content sites if you wish using search engines such as Google through AdSense. However, a business should see this as a short-term strategy whilst they concentrate on making their website search engine optimised to appear in organic website listings. There is actually a debate currently on the merits of having a listing in both the organic and paid listings as effectively it ensures that in the case of Google you are taking 2 of the 20 available positions thereby removing 1 competitor. A paid listing has actually been shown to improves the SEO listing and vice versa.
How to select a good search engine optimisation specialist
There are thousands of companies out there offering search engine optimisation services. Simply avoid those that guarantee positions or offer strategies but cannot recommend a website design agency partner to work with on implementation that they will help oversee.
Also avoid SEO companies that offer the design and build process as well unless they can prove the quality of the team who will be implementing for you. Projects so often fail between strategy and implementation leaving customers without a website that will truly add value to their business, generate sales or keep existing customers happy.
How to ensure maximum exposure on Google and other search engines
Relying on META tags alone is no longer a viable search engine optimisation strategy, with some search engines completely ignoring the traditional tags in particular the Keyword META tags. However the traditional Title tag is still important for search engines and the description tag is also important as it is often what is displayed on the search results page so the copy needs to be succinct, relevant and attention grabbing to capture click throughs.
Spiders do though now focus more on the content of a page looking for clues to determine what the page is about – therefore the best tip is to make it easy for them to find what they need. Employing standards compliant HTML coding to reduce the amount of code a spider has to navigate through to find keywords and phrases is a good start, along with giving pages unique titles which succinctly describe what to expect in the content.
Organising page content into a clear hierarchy using standard headings (<H1>, <H2> etc.) also allows the spiders to assess the importance of the keywords that it finds. You can use style sheets to configure how the H tags actually appear to the user. Ensure the site has a logical structure and that page URL’s and link tags give clues about what is on the page or will appear on the following page, preferably with keyword integrated into the code. Spiders need to navigate a site efficiently so try and allow for any page in the site to be accessed within no more than three clicks – which has always been standard web practice.
It’s also important to have a sitemap, and in the case of Google ensure you have created their bespoke sitemap and submit to them directly through their Webmaster Central portal (especially for new websites). In addition, spiders reward sites with pages grouped into complementary content channels as opposed to individual pages of content. This is especially important in a competitive market and is the reason many companies develop standalone content microsites and is well worth considering if you are entering a competitive marketplace.
Finally from a keyword development process it is important to take into account latent semantic indexing. This is where search engine spiders look for related terms to a particular keyword within a pages content to determine relevancy so it is important to consider alternative phrases.
All the techniques described are not only good for increasing a website’s search engine ranking, but also excellent ways to improve the accessibility of websites for users with visual impairments or other disabilities.
Search engine strategies are critical to website promotional activities
Search engines are critical to website promotion. As an example, a consumer brand can spend a lot of money advertising on TV, print and radio. If the consumer cannot remember the website address they will then use a search engine to find it – and if you are not there, the money you spent will only be for the benefit of your competitors.
For an SME it is just as important. Corporate companies are seeing smaller business gradually taking market share through the fact they are implementing better online strategies, are being found in search engines and have a website that makes them look like one of the big guys.
You cannot cheat a search engine
Forget all the talk about using special tricks and tactics to achieve higher search rankings and certainly avoid anyone plying this as their trade. The credibility of all search engines is based on them presenting results that are true to what the web user is looking for – therefore you will be found out, and quite possibly your website will be black listed.
Looking into the future for search engines
Future of search is exciting. It’ll become more personal with search engines getting to know you and making suggestions based on your previous search patterns, browsing history or what products you have bought online and are particularly interested in.
Mobile internet on the move is another opportunity for search engines combined with GPS to be able to instantly locate a user (on request) and then present results based on geographical location.
Search is also becoming increasingly used by people with social problems looking for help secure in the knowledge they can initially remain anonymous. Therefore it’s important we bring the latest search strategies and thinking to charities that can help based on geographic location to the user.