SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
Search Engines – What they are and why they matter
If you’ve ever tried to develop a website or market anything online, you’ve probably come across the term “search engine optimisation” (SEO). It may have sounded like alien technology at the time, geek speak, or just another confusing techno phrase, and possibly you didn’t give it a second thought.
Which would have been a serious mistake.
It’s difficult to over-estimate the effect of online marketing these days. Businesses are increasingly making use of the internet as the next marketing frontier, and there are even companies whose only presence is online, without having a dedicated trading premises. Online advertising and sales are occupying a larger share of the revenue flow than ever before, so if you’re serious about taking your brand to the next level, the internet is definitely your territory, allowing you to reach markets far from home.
And that means you’ll have to get to know search engines. A short description of a search engine would be that it’s an index of websites available for browsing. You enter a word or phrase into the search engine, and it gives you available sites related to your search phrase. However, from a marketing perspective, search engines are far more important than simple searching. Nowadays, there are different ways of searching, and also different ways of presenting the results.
The most basic point that any company should take note of is their ranking on the search engine results pages (SERP). As you may have noticed, a search engine typically deals in thousands or millions of results. Even if you have a beautifully developed site with lots of trendy graphics and crisp content, your page has practically no chance of getting noticed at position 38346 on the SERP. And that’s bad news.
Which is why SEO is so important.
In short, then, SEO is about shifting your website up the rankings, into the top ten, or even the top five. In rare cases, you may even be able to claim the number one position for a time. And that’s the good news. It’s possible to improve your ranking drastically, by making use of sensible techniques which have been proven over time to deliver results for a wide range of sites.
Refer to the short description of a search engine a few paragraphs ago. It’s a short description because it doesn’t factor in the effect that a search may have on your business or your customer base. If people are using search engines to find what they want to buy, it follows that you need to catch their attention as they search. In a society which is becoming rapidly more technology-dependent, you should not underestimate the potential of this medium to increase public awareness of your enterprise.
It should be noted at this stage that the exact method used by the main search engines to assess websites is proprietary. In other words, anyone who claims to have access to that kind of information is probably sucking their thumb. However, based on long experience, it is possible to identify certain key issues in SEO. These are issues that are of proven relevance, and are known to affect the ranking of a site in the SERP.
The ABC’s of Search Engine Optimisation
On-site issues
The phrase “on-site” implies that these issues are all related to aspects of your site per se, i.e. they are issues that your site design will address. They therefore represent the side of SEO that you have the most control over. You should not, however, fall into the trap of thinking that they are therefore the most important issues in SEO. They matter, but they do not stand alone in the process.
One of the most commonly mentioned SEO issues is that of keywords. Essentially, when people use a search engine, they are using keywords to guide their internet browser to what they want to see. As a company, you need to tap into the potential of this angle, and you can do so by optimising your site around the most important keywords in your line of business. An SEO consultant will be able to research your business’ online presence, and provide you with appropriate keywords that people are currently searching for, as well as ways of structuring your site so that you derive the maximum benefit from your keywords.
In doing so, you will find that the content on your site probably needs to change. This is a very important step in SEO, because search engines place a very high premium on your site’s content. They want to see content that is fresh, original and relevant to your site. Your content needs to be up-to-date and factual, and at the same time it should be unique to your site. Copying content off other sites is not an option in SEO, no matter how good that content may be. A professional content writer will be able to generate content for your site that meets these criteria.
Off-site issues
These are the SEO issues that are not related directly to your site, but rather to how your site interacts with other sites and how it is perceived by people online. The two most important issues at play here are the links that your site has and the employment of social media in your marketing strategy.
Search engines assign weight to the links on your site because they see them as a measure of your site’s popularity. A site with many other sites linking to it is usually regarded as a good site. However, not all links are good for your site’s ranking. Once again, an SEO consultant can advise you as to how to structure your links, how to get more links, which links to avoid, and how to make them work to your advantage.
Social media have become wildly popular in recent years. Sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube have hundreds of millions of subscribers. Obviously, the search engines do not ignore the effect of such media when assessing your site. Maintaining the correct, targeted presence on the various social media is something that a consultant can also help you to do.
Sponsored rankings
Of course, search engine operators are aware of the fact that companies desire a higher ranking. Therefore, it is possible to pay for a high ranking, either through a “sponsored link” or a Pay Per Click (PPC) programme. In the former, your company’s link will appear high up on the SERP as a paid-for link (note Google will not sell prominent ranking in the SERP, only in the demarkated area on the right and top of the SERP), while in the latter you place a prominent advertisement in the SERP and pay a small fee every time someone clicks on it.
There are various good and potentially bad points about either of these techniques, and it takes someone with experience to use them in an appropriate fashion. The key difference between sponsored rankings and organic (natural or unsponsored) rankings is that sponsorship, especially PPC, involves an ongoing, changing cost, depending on the level of traffic and demand for your specific keyword/s, while organic ranking typically entails a fixed initial investment in SEO which does not depend on the level of traffic and tends to reduce over time. Remember also that ordinary indexing by the search engines costs you nothing.
SEO in practice
In practice, SEO has proven to be a rather rocky road at times, with various pitfalls along the way. Techniques such as link spamming, content scraping, keyword stuffing and cloaking have all made their appearance, usually to the detriment of the sites on which they occurred. In SEO, it is certainly possible to try too hard. Trying too hard for optimisation can lead to the so-called “black-hat” (underhand or deceptive) techniques just mentioned, or avoidable errors, which can in turn destroy your ranking or even result in your site being banned from the search engines altogether, despite the short term gains that such techniques may cause. It can take a practised eye to discern the good from the bad in SEO.
However, this should not discourage you. There are several legitimate (or “white-hat”) methods in SEO. For example, there are acceptable ways of gaining links for your site, such as viral campaigns and link research, or embedded content. None of these methods will cost you your position on the SERP. Fresh content is important, and refreshing the content on your site is something that you’ll probably spend time doing anyway, that is if you are serious about providing your customers with a worthwhile experience.
Ultimately, your site should be about customer satisfaction. As you spend time working on the SEO of your site, you may come to realise that it is always wise to do what is best for the customer. By satisfying your customers, you will create a site that is genuinely relevant and attractive and that will satisfy the search engines. Sometimes, optimisation takes place unintentionally, simply as a result of an improvement to a site. Then again, some of the highest ranked sites are genuinely outstanding places to visit. This is not a coincidence. Search engines reward genuine excellence.
Excellence should be pervasive in your site. It means having flawless source code, proper content, and a sensible link structure, both within and outside of the site. It’s an overall approach that takes time to implement, but the increased visibility of your brand will make it worth your while, as will the new respect given to a company listed in the top ten on the SERP. Perhaps the most important lesson of all in SEO is to take an holistic approach. It is a mistake to focus on only one or two aspects of the process. All of your SEO efforts need to work together to produce an effective synthesis, and your SEO campaign should dovetail seamlessly with your general marketing strategy, so as to create a customer-focused, sales-driven approach. For example, good content will not only be appreciated by your customers, but will also attract links from other sites. Links from other sites will draw more traffic to your site, and some of that traffic may convert into new customers. And so on.
There is no magic bullet in SEO, and there doesn’t need to be. All it takes is a little patience, and some sound advice from an experienced professional.
