Search Engine Optimisation – The Basics

Ah SEO. It’s the bane of anyone trying to delve into the cesspool of the internet for the first time. There’s an encyclopaedia of information that can be written about it. Often times people will simply hire an expert to “get your website onto the first page of Google.” It’s a simple guarantee that causes thousands of businesses, small and large, to throw money at these ambiguous methods for an ambiguous promise. While some businesses are successful in their methods, others aren’t, and it’s almost impossible to tell between the two.

Popularly, many businesses have been vying for the prestigious pole position on the first page of Google. Being a directory where hundreds of millions of searches are made daily, it is an obvious way to get loads and loads of traffic into your website. This process of garnering traffic through a search engine is simply known as SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation.

You may say to this, “I already knew this,” but this is where common knowledge tends to end. Once someone starts delving into the algorithms that make Google tick, eyes glaze over and the work is handed to the so-called “SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Experts.” Search Engine Optimisation itself has evolved quickly as a facet of computing, and it makes sense to hire a professional who can keep up with the ever-changing trends. However, Search Engine Optimisation isn’t some unknowable, mystical thing either. Let’s start from the beginning.

A Bit of History

Back in the 90s, when the internet was in its infancy, Yahoo was the search engine used by most. What Yahoo did was visit a website, and people would visually evaluate it and give it a ranking based on how relevant it actually was. It was a subjective thing; if someone thought your website did the job it was supposed to, was popular and informative, it ranked well. This process was rather arduous.

That’s where Google came in. It became popular because websites would appear on its search engine much more accurately indicative of the website’s quality. There was little manual work involved. Google did this by evaluating two things: keywords and incoming links. This made it rather easy for people to manipulate the system by linking with various child sites, friends’ sites and so on. Websites with the biggest physical networks won out.

Google has since caught on. Its ranking systems have evolved countless times, and more complex interactions come into play with well-ranking websites now. Keywords and links still have their effects, but they must be relevant. Those links have to come from external sources; Google knows when you’re pulling a link from the same server or trying to flood the market unnecessarily. The systems that index a website into Google can read content, evaluating the quality of what’s said and looking especially for gimmicky attempts at flooding content with keywords. Google is smart. It can’t be tricked for long, and even SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) experts who take large sums of money to do this job know they’re offering a service, not a guarantee.

The Definition

Here’s the problem: no longer can you spam keywords or back-links or use devious ways to trick Google. There are ways to optimise a website to make it more relevant for Google, or any other search engine to pick up, but that’s simply technical expertise and understanding your business.

Think of it like this: A web page is like an online salesman. SEO is his training; what will give him the tools to do what he needs to get sales, but the meat of it is how that salesman goes out and actually gets the sales. It takes charisma, personality and the ability to sell, and the training (SEO) that enabled this was only a small percentage of his success. It’s best to think of your website as a salesman, only the qualities that make it successful are a little different to the right personality.

It’s about reputation. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) can be defined simply as the tools your website uses to enable its potential. The real bulk of getting new business, generating visitors, is much more organic, and much more robust.

If you went and cut off your Search Engine Optimisation service right now, your page would likely drop. You may come to the realisation that a lot of what’s being done is really about holding up the site’s ranking, rather than quality work in relevance to your business. It may feel overwhelming to think that even the experts don’t fully know what they’re doing, but rest assured that you have more knowledge and power in understanding how to sustain your own ranking than you might think. You know your business and your audience better than anyone.

Your Title and Meta Description Still Matter

When a search engine visits (or indexes) your website, it searches through the website’s code to help create a listing for each of the pages and also uses the information to rank them amongst other sites on the web. Two tags are still vital to a relevant and high-ranking listing: the ‘title’ and the ‘meta description’.

Title – The title is probably the most important of the two. This tag is what appears in the top bar of your web browser when viewing the page, but also what will appear as the link on your search engine listing. This will aid in targeting certain words or phrases that you would like each page to be found from.

With the billions of pages on the web, having certain phrases or words in your title aren’t going to guarantee you’re going to appear as the top listing, on the first page or even in the first 10 pages. Therefore it’s smart to be relevant and specific with what you place in the page title, because if you are vague you have zero chance of being found.

For example, if we as web designers just put the phrase ‘Web Design’ in our title we have to compete with every other web design company in the world. If you think logically, someone genuinely looking for our service will most likely be specific when searching the internet. Something like ‘Web Design South East Melbourne’ would not only be easier to rank on but should also produce more genuine leads.

Meta Description – Unlike the title, the meta description isn’t viewable to users but is read by search engines through the website code. It will be used by some search engines to give some body text to your listing, appearing underneath the site title on the search engine. However, some search engines ignore this and generate a listing description from the page’s content.

It is important to keep your descriptions short and to the point. Search engines aren’t going to allow you to have an essay underneath your listing title and will be restricted in length. Each search engine is different but most will index around 200-250 characters but will probably actually display less than that. Make sure your description is relevant and clearly describes what is on the page.

Remember that just these tags alone won’t skyrocket your website to the top of the search engines, but they allow you to specify how you want to be found. Search Engine Optimisation is an ongoing thing that requires constant tweaks and changes to keep up to date with the complicated algorithms that search engines use to rank websites.

SEO Today: A Complete Digital Marketing Strategy

In the early days, Search Engine Optimisation revolved around keywords and volume-based content and links. Build a big backlinks profile, cram your content with keywords, and the results would roll in. Your rankings depended on how many links you could buy, and it didn’t matter if your content was in any way useful to the user.

These days, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has exploded in more than a dozen directions, each one impacting the overall picture. These areas include:

• Mobile performance
• Press and PR mentions
• Structured data
• Page speed and quality hosting
• Usage data
• Design and UX
• Effective content
• Social media

This means digital marketers have to think broadly about their strategy, with no one aspect taking precedence. Although some of the older strategies may still provide some quick results, their impact has lessened and comes with the risk of penalty if you stray too close to the black side of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Your social campaign has to complement your content, while your content has to work in harmony with the design and user experience, all of which has to be optimised for mobile browsing and interaction.

A tightly integrated marketing strategy means your campaign will have a longer reach, with much more longevity. Google’s algorithm updates have been working to reward stronger sites that are built on quality content and a streamlined user experience. Honest link profiles are more valuable than ones that have been bought, and the penalties for not adhering to the guidelines can be harsh and long-lasting. Developing a comprehensive strategy with sustainable methods can seem like a slow burn, but it will reap rewards for far longer than short-term tactics.

Each aspect of a campaign has to be of the highest quality. Allowing your user experience to be let down by poor content, or vice versa, will undermine the whole effort. For a small business it can be difficult to cover all the bases, but focusing on the core elements will ensure your strategy helps, rather than hinders, the overall effect.

It’s vital to understand that SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) no longer exists in a vacuum, and that every signal leading to your site has a cumulative effect. These include comments you make on other blogs, social media promotions, links to disreputable sites, or an inaccurate map listing. A complete SEO strategy could even encompass a hashtag related to your business or a particular promotion. Google’s algorithms are designed to assess every aspect, and their track record of pushing the envelope of search technology virtually guarantees they’ll keep developing and improving their calculations.

While it may seem suddenly overwhelming, Google’s changes are more about levelling the playing field than making it difficult for businesses to rank. They aim to reward hard work and quality sites by ranking those that add value to their search results page. The more valuable your website and the more authoritative it is in its field, the better your chances of ranking well.

But How Do You Actually Do This Well?

My favourite way of thinking about it is to imagine that Google, or any other search engine, doesn’t exist. Or rather, think of it the same way you think of a visitor to your website; how will they react? How much necessary information is there? Can they find what they want? What extra stuff do you offer? Is the content fluid (is it updated enough that they might want to come back for more)? Often it’s more marketing than tricks, but still requires some technical knowledge.

The Content

Content wise, a website is a hybrid between a book and a brochure. It should be concise and simple to understand, and its purpose should be to sell your product, but it can also be a place for detailed information, so the user doesn’t have to research elsewhere to find what they need.

Take our website for example. While we strictly are not an IT company, our support centre has articles that can guide people through common problems. What this achieves is that users will be more likely to come to us for support, and it prevents the need for them to go elsewhere to find the information they need.

Another example is a car website. While it’s used to showcase how the car looks, how it drives, its features and the big sell, there’s also a place for the technical specs, the prices, the in-depth details that mean someone serious about buying, and making that big investment, has all the information presented right in front of them.

Part of balancing this volume of information needs to be addressed at the design stage of the website, using the design to direct the flow of beneficial material. Mostly, however, it’s about wording. Don’t mistake this for keyword spamming, bloated paragraphs dripping with a phrase repeated over and over aren’t fooling anyone. Google doesn’t like it, and neither does someone trying to read it.

All someone wants is what do I get, and how do I find stuff about it? Word it organically, like a sales pitch; use charisma and personality to convince. Google understands it, don’t worry about that, it’s more human than we sometimes give it credit for.

The Audience: Focus

Focus. That’s the big killer here; lack of focus. The whole of the internet is essentially a giant world-wide paste board. Advertisements, flyers, everything is pasted all over it.

What people often do is take their website and just smack it right in the middle of this big paste board, then step back and wait for business to flow in, oblivious that their target audience only reads anything in the bottom right corner. If you want to get business in your suburb, make that your target audience.

This is easy, with the solution lying in on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Keywords, titles, descriptions, keep it localised to your target market. For example, Web Design South East Melbourne is our current market, and it’s also a keyword we use in the title of our web pages to tell Google ‘this is where we are, we want people in this area to find us’.

Often people will search locally, if they want to find a mechanic, they won’t type “mechanic” into Google, they’ll write “mechanic Dandenong” and judge on the quality of the website from there.

A Few Practical Tips

Keep social, the internet is a social place. The internet isn’t a big alien entity operating under its own rules, it’s just a tool for communication, like a phone. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all free forums for social interaction within a potentially unlimited audience. These places are like a party: you’d chat, share stories, socialise, and when someone asks what you do, you have an opportunity to sell. Engage your audience by interesting them, not many people can be sold online immediately, and connecting with your audience first is a reliable way to build traffic and online success.

Be informative and personal. Professionalism on the internet is loose to say the least. People on the internet want to see other people, not a faceless corporate entity. Connecting personally with your audience is essential; if someone can attach a face and a personality to what they’re reading, they’re more likely to keep visiting your website. Maintaining your blog regularly is a great way to do this.

Network. There’s never been a more powerful force than word of mouth. Refer people to your website, build a reputation, and make your online presence an extension of yourself. If someone asks something, don’t oversell, just say, “check out my website for more details.” It’s a salesperson that works 24/7, without being forceful or intrusive, people can peruse in their own time.

Get to know the internet. Just like it’s unwise to buy a used car without taking it for a drive, it’s worth understanding what your website is and how it works. Tools like Google Analytics can help you narrow down how to approach your audience online.

Build a reputation. Whether or not you refer or work on your website regularly, if people are interested, they’re more likely these days to check for you online. A good reputation, a large network of associates, and a base of customers who value you is a great way to get people to check you out, which equals more traffic, and more traffic equals better ranking.

Don’t be afraid of the unknown. The internet can be overwhelming for some, but understanding it quells the fear associated with the unknown. If you’re unsure, ask your web developer. Ask questions, learn the ins and outs of running a website, and you’ll be giving more qualitative content and results for search engines to find yourself.

The Service: Give People a Reason to Return

Getting customers to your website is one thing, but for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) you want not only volume in your traffic, but repeat visitors. Websites that simply say “contact us” for everything serve only to dole out information. In time, those visitors will either take their custom elsewhere, or need only occasionally revisit for basic details.

Your website needs to offer something for nothing; free information or services that keep attracting visitors regularly. Most businesses can’t offer something uniquely available online, and the best way to do this is a blog.

Business life is a series of ups and downs. A blog lets you share these on your website in a way that appears like an ongoing story, letting users engage personally and feel part of the growth of the business. Offer tips, give advice, show and tell how you’re going.

The internet is now a social place. It’s a hub of communication and a repository of information, kind of like a library you’re allowed to talk in. People are attracted to a genuine story, and the opportunity to get insight into a business is enticing for many. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, giving people insight into the goings-on, on a smaller scale than a blog, will generate interest in your business.

It’s Easy to Say “Do It Yourself”

It’s easy to say “do it all yourself, and you’ll do it best,” but understanding the internet and how to build an online presence isn’t easy. Not everyone can write with charisma, not everyone understands how to use a website editor, and not everyone knows how to use Facebook or LinkedIn well. That’s why, at the end of the day, many people get help: hire a professional copywriter to give your content a spruce, hire a graphic designer for banners, tackle what you can yourself and bring in others for what you can’t.

That’s also why people hire Search Engine Optimisation experts, they don’t have the time to do all of it. But put in the hard yards yourself where you can, and it’s definitely worth it.

So…

Work is the answer to any of this. You could employ an Search Engine Optimisation expert to do that work for you, or you could do it yourself, but for any of these techniques to get the desired result, the work has to be put in. The website can’t sit static and attract customers by being how it always is. If there’s a blank brick wall on the way to work, you might notice it once and drive on, but if it’s painted with a different design every week, it’s bound to more often catch the eye.