Search Engine Marketing
Here at Weboptimisation.org we have gained a wealth of experience to help our clients with search engine marketing. From researching the net, and applying our own experience gained since 2002, we now have very satisfied clients sites that are now appearing firmly with page 1 ranks in Google and other search engines. Please feel free to read our Portfolio to demonstrate this.
We are also happy to provide the following guidelines so that if you are planning to employ us to manage your website rankings then at least we can be clear on a few areas:
There are no shortcuts
Unfortunately, if you are planning for your site to feature page 1 ranks within a couple of weeks, or looking for a quick and easy way to get great results, There isn’t one. With all search engine marketing we need to expect to do some hard work, especially when it comes to the content of your site and link building. If anyone is telling you different from this, or you have been approached by companies offering quick and easy methods then we would advise against such services. Here at WebOptimisation.org, in realisitic terms, if we were to take on a new client and build the website plus orchestrate a link building programme, then we would expect page 1 search engine results over a 3 to 6 month period+.
Write good content
This is probably the single most important thing you need to do if you want to be found on the web. Even if your site is technically perfect for search engine robots, it won’t do you any good unless you also fill it with good content. Layouts are also key however good information on the keyword topics you are aiming for is paramount. Good content would be text that is factually and grammatically correct, though that is not necessarily a must for all kinds of sites. Whatever your site is about, the content needs to be unique and/or specific enough to appeal to people. More specifically, it needs to be useful to the people you want to find your site. Good content brings return visitors. Return visitors who like your content will eventually link to your site, and having lots of inbound links is great for search engine rankings, especially if those links are from highly ranked sites.
At WebOptimsation.org we are able to offer a content writing service specifically targeted at the keywords you wish to attract traffic for.
Please call us on 0871 875 6759 for a brief review
Closely related to good content is fresh content. By adding new content regularly, you give visitors a reason to come back. Search engine robots will also visit your site more often once they notice that you update regularly, which means that any new content you add will be indexed quicker.
When doing work for clients, creating quality content is rarely the responsibility of the web designer, however we at WebOptimisation are able to build a site from scratch specifically targeted at keywords for page 1 ranks. Often, If a client wants to write their own copy, this is fine if they’re good at it and keep adding new content. The services we offer are to write unique content, edit existing content and provide search engine friendly content laid out properly. It is not possible to get high rankings without good content.
Contemplate The Spelling
To succeed in any search engine marketing it is vital to spell correctly as it goes against the definition of 'good content' However If you write in English, you are probably aware of the differences in spelling between American and British English. Colour vs. color, search engine optimisation vs. search engine optimization, etc. There are also many words that are commonly misspelled (this goes for all languages). If words with multiple spellings or commonly misspelled words are an important part of your content, i.e. keywords, consider adding a glossary or similar to include the most common spelling variations on the page. You will find that most search engine algorithms are now able to include calculations on spelling the same word from around the world.
Write Keyword Page Titles
By making your page titles simple, yet descriptive and relevant, you make it easier for search engines to know what each page is about, and people scanning through search results can quickly determine whether your document contains what they are looking for. The page title is also what is used to link to your site from search result listings. Because of this, the title element is one of the most important elements on a page. Some argue that it is the most important element. When it comes to the order of the text in the title element, I’ve found that the following works well:
Document title | Section name | Site or company name
Based on a discussion here a while ago, that is probably one of the best formats for accessible title texts. Again, accessibility and SEO work together.
Whatever you do, don’t use the same title text for all documents. Doing so will make it much harder for search engines, people browsing through search results, and site visitors to quickly find out what the document is about.
Use Proper Headings
Use the h1 - h6 elements for headings. Using graphics for headings may let you use any typeface you want, but search engines aren’t going to pay much attention. Even if you (as is required) use the alt attribute to specify alternate text for heading images, that text will not be anywhere near as important as real text in a heading element. In my experience, this is true even if the images are inside heading elements. If you know otherwise, please tell.
If you cannot use real text, look at the various image or Flash replacement techniques that are available. Be aware that there may be a tiny risk involved in doing so. Since image replacement techniques involve hiding text, it is theoretically possible for search engines to penalise you. Currently that risk seems very slim, but don’t say I didn’t warn you if it does happen.
Use Search Engine Friendly URLs
Avoid dynamically generated URLs that use a query string to let the server know which data to fetch from a database. Search engine robots may have difficulties with this kind of URL – they may stop at the question mark and not even look at the query string.
Use search engine friendly, human readable URLs instead. This will help both your ranking and your users. I’ve seen incredible improvements in search engine results from just changing the URL scheme of a site.
Modifying and rewriting a site’s URLs can be a little tricky, and some CM systems make it more difficult than others to implement. It is worth the effort though. A couple of resources to help you make your URLs better:
Generating Simple URLs for Search Engines
mod_rewrite: A Beginner’s Guide to URL Rewriting
Get linked to
There is no easy and sustainable way to solve this one except for – you guessed it – providing good content. Incoming links are very, very important for SEO. They are also possibly the hardest part of SEO to implement.
However, in my experience incoming links are less important the more specific and unique your content is. As an example, a couple of our clients are in what you may call niche businesses. They don’t have lots of sites linking to them, yet they started ranking very well in search engines after I had applied the knowledge I’m sharing here to their sites.
Use valid, semantic, lean, and accessible markup
Most web browsers have advanced functionality to decipher the tag soup mess that is used instead of HTML on most current sites. You can’t rely on search engine robots to do that to the same extent. Validate your HTML and avoid presentational markup – use as lean and clean markup as possible. By increasing your content-to-markup ratio, you make your site faster and more attractive to search engines.
High quality markup will help boost your rankings.
Accessibility is also very important. Making your site more accessible to vision impaired humans will also help search engine robots find their way around it. Remember, Google is blind, so even if you don’t care about blind people using your site (which you should), you’ll still want it to be accessible. This means that you should use real headings, paragraphs, and lists, and avoid using anything that may interfere with search engine spiders.
Flash and JavaScript are fine, as long as they aren’t required to navigate your site and to access vital information. Don’t hide your content inside Flash files or behind funky JavaScript navigation. Browse your site in Lynx, and with graphics, CSS, JavaScript, and Flash off. If that gives you problems, it is likely to cause problems for search engine spiders.
Don’t try to trick the search engines
We have managed to refine our search engine marketing service simply over years of getting it wrong and then putting things right. We have learned by our mistakes and thats why we have created a wealth of experience. Don’t use cloaking, link farms, keyword stuffing, alt text spamming or other dubious methods. They may work for a short while if you’re lucky, but you risk being penalised or even banned from search engines, which you do not want. Search engines want their results to be accurate, and they don’t like it when people try to trick them. Just don’t do it.
If you wish WebOptimisation.org to review your site and manage your listings then please contact us to find out more information and gain a quote based on your needs.