SEO is mysterious.
Search Engine Optimisation essentially means ‘Making your website
more effective on Google’.
Although SEO work doesn’t solely focus on Google, if you’re
doing well on Google, you’re generally doing well across the board.
Need proof? In 2013, Google went offline for 5 minutes and overall web traffic dropped 40%... Globally.
As of March 2014, comScore reports that Google commanded 67.5% of the search engine market, with the next highest being Microsoft sites
at 18.6%.
What is Involved in SEO?
It’s such a general term that it actually encompasses a lot
of things.
Primarily, it is the process of fine-tuning your website in
order to get more web traffic organically.
So when people search for something, your optimised website should rise
confidently to the top of the search results, because it’s clearly superior!
In terms of what’s involved, Search Engine Land, a leading daily publication on Search Marketing, described it quite nicely by splitting it up into
three sections;
1. Website Structure (Off-page SEO)
At Vital Hike, we design and build websites with online
marketing in mind.
Whilst we do carry out online marketing for websites we
have not built, it is not ideal. Here’s why.
The very structure of your website plays a part in online
marketing, and ultimately, your ranking on Google.
So when we are in charge of the build ourselves, we can use
the knowledge gleaned from our research stage to optimise everything behind the
scenes, including the tags, file names, file uploads, etc.
You have to know the market, your competition and your
customers first, to create an informed marketing plan... instead of just randomly entering keywords.
So SEO really starts at the beginning of a project.
It’s like laying the foundations for a house; doing it right
in the first place is far better than going back later and papering over the
cracks.
2. Website Content (On-page SEO)
The content of your site is everything that’s visible to you
and your customers; so the images, videos and text which make up most of your
pages.
Before the year 2000, webmasters would simply stuff pages of
keywords onto their website and easily attain a number 1 ranking spot on Google.
Pages would just repeat a key phrase over and over, e.g.
girls shoes online, girls shoes online, girls shoes online.
But this kind of content provides no value to web visitors,
and modern-day search engines all recognise this.
So search engine algorithms have improved.
Nowadays, search engines like Google are analysing the
content on your website from a number of different angles, looking at;
- How relevant the content looks
- How many related keywords are used alongside the main keyword
- How often keywords are repeated
- How many backlinks there are to other relevant content
- How often new content is uploaded
- And more.
Search engines want to provide users with the most
impressive sounding website, so fine-tuning your content is very important.
 |
| "My name's Henry, and I enjoy sneaky SEO tactics." |
3. Negative Factors
And finally we come to the dark underbelly of SEO… Negative
ranking factors!
SEO doesn’t just involve pumping your site full of positive
factors; you also have to avoid going overboard and breaking Google's rules.
A number of factors will make your site look bad, and
de-optimise all our hard work. So whilst we’re working away adding in positive
factors, we also have to make sure to avoid the following…
- Sparse, poor content coupled with too many ads. Websites that focus on advertising instead of creating a fun user experience, will be punished by Google, because they just look greedy!
- Keyword stuffing. It’s hard to ‘keyword stuff’ to dangerous levels accidentally. You would have to fill a few lines with just one keyword over and over. As it clearly has to be intentional, Google won’t be happy if you’re caught!
- Buying Links or Likes. People sometimes resort to paying for links to their website, because the greater the number of websites that link people to your website, the higher your Google rank should be. However, this is blatantly scamming the system.
Major American shop, J C Penney was penalised for 3 months
in 2011 when it was discovered they had bought links. Their ranking plummeted,
they stopped showing up on Search Results, and they promptly fired their SEO
team.
So there you have it!
What is Involved in SEO?
Behind-the-scenes tagging, optimising content in terms of
keywords and links, and avoiding any SEO violations.
If you’re interested in ‘Making your website more effective
on Google’, SEO is the honest, long-term solution you need.
Through SEO, Google can tell what your website is about,
what you focus on, what service you provide, etc. And because of this, your
website will rightfully rank well when customers search for questions that you
can answer.
Put the Effort in with SEO,
Reap the Rewards for Years,
With Vital Hike
Previous Blog:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Got a question about what we talked about above? Or did we leave something out?
Pop your comment in the box below and hit Publish!