Enterprise Nation

Online search is growing massively with users increasingly relying on the main search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN to find information and inform purchasing decisions. So says Trevor Ginn of search engine consultancy business, Vendlab, and he’s here to show how you can optimise your site. 

The Why, What and How of SEO

Optimising your site so that it appears high in the search engine results is a cost effective way of marketing. If your business cannot be found by the search engines then it’s invisible to a large potential audience.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search engines can find information quickly as they build an index of a huge number of web pages and their content. When a web search is performed it is this index and not the internet which is searched.

When a search is performed, the search engine searches its index for pages containing the search word or phrase and it will return a list of results displayed in sequence according to its ranking algorithm.

The method for achieving a high placement on the search results page is called search engine optimization (SEO). The objective is to gain a high placement for searches which are relevant to your website.

What should I do?

• Step 1: Research Keywords

Web surfers search on keywords and so it is important to establish the words and phrases for which you would like your site to be found. If the words are not there, you will never appear in the search results. You can do this by looking at search popularity tools such as this or by looking at your web logs.

• Step 2: Eliminate barriers to indexing

The first goal of SEO is to ensure that the search engine spiders can properly index or read all the pages of your site. If a search engine cannot index your site, then no matter how relevant your content, you will never appear in the search results. Barriers to inclusion include the use of frames/tables, flash, javascript and content management systems

• Step 3: Get Indexed

Search engines are constantly scouring the web for new pages. If, after you have solved any technical issues your site is still not being indexed, most search engines have a site submission page which you can use. Google also has a tool called Google sitemaps which helps Google index sites.

• Step 4: On Page Optimisation factors

Search engines assess each web page and assign importance to the words and phrases on it. It is therefore vital that you optimise your page for the words which you think are most important. Think of a search engine as like a person. When you read a document you pay most attention to the words which are in the titles, near the top of the page and in bold. Here is a quick list of areas of your page to optimise for your chosen keywords

    * Page meta tags
    * Pages titles
    * Your first and last paragraph

Each page should be treated individually with different keywords relating to the content of the page. It is no good giving each page the same treatment.

• Step 5: Off Page Optimisation factors

Search engines use the number of links going to a page as an indication of the importance of a page. All other things being equal, for a given search phrase, the page with the most links will get the higher position in the search engine results. It is therefore important to build the number of links into your site to increase your rankings. This can be done by having quality content to which people want to link, asking for links from your business partners or buying links.

• Step 6: Monitor, Monitor, Monitor

It is important to monitor the traffic to your site to see where your visitors are coming from and what search phrases they are using. This information can then be used to refine your site. Google provides a free tracking system called Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) and there are also other free services such as Statcounter (www.statcounter.com).

• Trevor Ginn, Vendlab.com