Many people who launch a website don’t realise quite how competitive the internet is. If you want to start gaining traffic, you must put in some work to start telling people that your website is live. This article gives you a few ideas that can help bring traffic to a new website, and if you use a long term approach these methods can be very successful. As with any form of marketing, building a website’s reputation takes time but even with a little bit of regular work there is no reason why you can’t start to get some good traffic numbers. Below is a list of some things that you can do for free, all you need is a little bit of regular time.
Through experience, I have found that the most effective way to use the following tactics is to sync them all up. With minimal effort your facebook fans, twitter followers, and blog readers can be fed the same information. This will also help any SEO and or link building work that is being done for your website.
Videos
Putting together a successful video campaign can result in a very high amount of traffic and exposure for your website. Video blogs and promotional videos are easy to put together and with websites such as Youtube; publishing your videos has never been easier. The biggest decision to make is whether to host, or post your videos. I would argue that doing both is the best way. Having a great video on your website can attract a good number of natural links, and posting a video on Youtube should attract traffic. I would advise that you put the full video on your website, and a shorter ‘promo’ version on Youtube. This way, anyone who watches your video on Youtube will then have a reason to visit your website.
Twitter/Facebook
Using both twitter and facebook gives you the opportunity to reach an extremely wide audience. Both can be synced up together feeding the same information out to your online friends and fans, with each site adding momentum to the other. Popular activities on these sites include fan competitions, publishing company news, promoting new content and generally growing an ‘online community’. If your content is always of a high quality, and interesting and useful to the user, your groups should grow naturally and also gain links and traffic back to your site. The most important thing is that they are updated regularly with good content; it’s not enough to just set up some profiles and hope for the best!
Blogs
Having a regularly updated, useful and interesting blog can really help your website grow with regards to returning traffic. A well composed blog can attract a following of it’s own, thus giving you traffic that you would never have otherwise benefited from. Popular ideas for blog entries could include; top ten lists, product reviews; tips; industry news or company news. Once you have published a new blog post, make sure you promote via your facebook page and your twitter account.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Friday, 19 March 2010
Improving Website Usability
No matter how much effort you put into SEO and online marketing, your website must be user friendly in order to get the most out of your new traffic. In addition to this, having a website that aids the user in their needs will also help the SEO process as great content will always attract natural links. Therefore, anyone undertaking SEO work should be aware of website usability and try to ensure that some basic measures are put in place.
Window Of Opportunity
So many people fall into the trap of designing their website to display what they want to display, and not what their target users are looking for. If you look at any analytical software you will see that most traffic from the search engines will only stick around for about 15 seconds; unless of course they find exactly what they are looking for. This is a very small window of opportunity and needs to be carefully thought through to gain success.
Research
As with any other type of SEO work, you should always start with some keyword research. This will show you exactly what your potential visitors will be looking for, and help you to identify what words and phrases they will need to see on your website. When conducting your research, think long and hard about exactly what it is you’re offering on your website. If you have a website offering ‘luxury airport pick ups’, titles such as ‘airport pick ups’ might be too vague. Use ‘luxury airport pick ups’ and you know this will precisely target the market you are looking for.
Content
Writing content for your website can be quite hard from an insider’s perspective. It’s all too easy to waffle on and on, after all you know your business better than anyone else. It’s always advisable to have a third party check over your content to make sure the message gets across quick enough. Remember, give your users exactly the information they want and need; nothing more, nothing less. It might help when writing content to think about the ‘four W’s’: What, Where, When, Why. Try to be as focused as possible always remembering that you only have about 15 seconds at the most to capture a potential client.
Navigation
Once you have your traffic hooked into your website, it is vital that they can navigate their way through the website in a clear and structured manner. Many websites fail by being too complicated with different bits of information everywhere. Drawing out a plan will help you to decide on the layout of the website from the user’s perspective. Be as ruthless as possible in your approach, if a page isn’t needed...remove it.
Website Features
You should also be thinking about a couple of features that you could have on your website that are aimed at trying to increase return visits. These features could be anything that’s helpful to the user, and they don’t have to be fancy or expensive. A simple, well written blog can keep people returning, or in a similar vein, a regularly updated news page should also do the trick. If you want to go a bit further you could offer free tools or widgets to your users, this will certainly keep traffic returning and at the same help your link building efforts.
Window Of Opportunity
So many people fall into the trap of designing their website to display what they want to display, and not what their target users are looking for. If you look at any analytical software you will see that most traffic from the search engines will only stick around for about 15 seconds; unless of course they find exactly what they are looking for. This is a very small window of opportunity and needs to be carefully thought through to gain success.
Research
As with any other type of SEO work, you should always start with some keyword research. This will show you exactly what your potential visitors will be looking for, and help you to identify what words and phrases they will need to see on your website. When conducting your research, think long and hard about exactly what it is you’re offering on your website. If you have a website offering ‘luxury airport pick ups’, titles such as ‘airport pick ups’ might be too vague. Use ‘luxury airport pick ups’ and you know this will precisely target the market you are looking for.
Content
Writing content for your website can be quite hard from an insider’s perspective. It’s all too easy to waffle on and on, after all you know your business better than anyone else. It’s always advisable to have a third party check over your content to make sure the message gets across quick enough. Remember, give your users exactly the information they want and need; nothing more, nothing less. It might help when writing content to think about the ‘four W’s’: What, Where, When, Why. Try to be as focused as possible always remembering that you only have about 15 seconds at the most to capture a potential client.
Navigation
Once you have your traffic hooked into your website, it is vital that they can navigate their way through the website in a clear and structured manner. Many websites fail by being too complicated with different bits of information everywhere. Drawing out a plan will help you to decide on the layout of the website from the user’s perspective. Be as ruthless as possible in your approach, if a page isn’t needed...remove it.
Website Features
You should also be thinking about a couple of features that you could have on your website that are aimed at trying to increase return visits. These features could be anything that’s helpful to the user, and they don’t have to be fancy or expensive. A simple, well written blog can keep people returning, or in a similar vein, a regularly updated news page should also do the trick. If you want to go a bit further you could offer free tools or widgets to your users, this will certainly keep traffic returning and at the same help your link building efforts.
Friday, 5 March 2010
Ten Link Building Tactics
Link building is a hard task and should be seen as an ongoing long term effort, not a quick sprint. The best way to go about link building is to have a solid, yet varied strategy. Read below for my top ten ways to gaining inbound links to your site:
1. Creating Interesting Content
Creating great content is the best way to gain natural links back to your site. The aim is to publish content that your website users will want to link to. The search engines love these links as they produce a really natural link profile. Your new content could be anything from videos, to articles.
2. Giving Away Free Tools
Web users love free tools. If you can create tools that can really help people go about their work, you are guaranteed links. The idea is that whenever a tool is given away, it comes complete with a link to your website. Tools could include maps, analytical software, widgets and more.
3. Free Directory Submissions
There are thousands of directories on the internet offering publishers the chance to list their websites into relevant categories. This can be an effective method of building a large amount of links, especially for new websites. However, care must be taken to ensure that the directories actually pass value with their links.
4. Paid Directory Submissions
This is a very similar tactic to the one above, however in this instance you opt to pay for links in premium positions within the directory in choice. This can be a great way of gaining traffic, and most directories will give you multiple links if you pay for premium submissions. However, it is still vital that you make sure the directory has value.
5. Social Media
Having busy and active social media profiles will give you a great outlet for promoting your website and the content within it. With social media, the aim is to create an exciting online community that will generate interest back to your website. The more interesting content you post, the more interest you get, and the more links you should achieve. This also a very good way of increasing your traffic.
6. Blogging
Setting up a blog and keeping it updated can be hard work, but eventually you should end up with a base of regular readers. If you can create an interesting blog for your industry, this should help establish you within your field and generate interest and links back to your website.
7. Blog Comments
Finding relevant blogs and commenting on them not only gives you an opportunity to leave a link, it should also get you seen within the online community. Being seen as an active member of the online community in your field should make promoting your content easier.
8. Article Writing
Writing interesting and useful articles that are relevant to your industry is an effective way to keep pushing out new content. Leaving links within the article body should mean that when someone reposts your article, they in turn give you a link. There are many websites that allow you to post your articles, all of varying quality.
9. Press Releases
If you’ve got great content, shout about it! Taking care to write a carefully constructed press release should entice journalists and bloggers to write about your website (with a link of course). Try to target journalists and bloggers who write about your industry, and also make use of news wires that can distribute your press release to thousands of writers.
10. Forum Posts
Most forums allow their users to leave a link within their signature. Try to find relevant forums within your field and get stuck in. Don’t be spammy, just try to be useful and interactive. This should also lead to gaining some traffic.
1. Creating Interesting Content
Creating great content is the best way to gain natural links back to your site. The aim is to publish content that your website users will want to link to. The search engines love these links as they produce a really natural link profile. Your new content could be anything from videos, to articles.
2. Giving Away Free Tools
Web users love free tools. If you can create tools that can really help people go about their work, you are guaranteed links. The idea is that whenever a tool is given away, it comes complete with a link to your website. Tools could include maps, analytical software, widgets and more.
3. Free Directory Submissions
There are thousands of directories on the internet offering publishers the chance to list their websites into relevant categories. This can be an effective method of building a large amount of links, especially for new websites. However, care must be taken to ensure that the directories actually pass value with their links.
4. Paid Directory Submissions
This is a very similar tactic to the one above, however in this instance you opt to pay for links in premium positions within the directory in choice. This can be a great way of gaining traffic, and most directories will give you multiple links if you pay for premium submissions. However, it is still vital that you make sure the directory has value.
5. Social Media
Having busy and active social media profiles will give you a great outlet for promoting your website and the content within it. With social media, the aim is to create an exciting online community that will generate interest back to your website. The more interesting content you post, the more interest you get, and the more links you should achieve. This also a very good way of increasing your traffic.
6. Blogging
Setting up a blog and keeping it updated can be hard work, but eventually you should end up with a base of regular readers. If you can create an interesting blog for your industry, this should help establish you within your field and generate interest and links back to your website.
7. Blog Comments
Finding relevant blogs and commenting on them not only gives you an opportunity to leave a link, it should also get you seen within the online community. Being seen as an active member of the online community in your field should make promoting your content easier.
8. Article Writing
Writing interesting and useful articles that are relevant to your industry is an effective way to keep pushing out new content. Leaving links within the article body should mean that when someone reposts your article, they in turn give you a link. There are many websites that allow you to post your articles, all of varying quality.
9. Press Releases
If you’ve got great content, shout about it! Taking care to write a carefully constructed press release should entice journalists and bloggers to write about your website (with a link of course). Try to target journalists and bloggers who write about your industry, and also make use of news wires that can distribute your press release to thousands of writers.
10. Forum Posts
Most forums allow their users to leave a link within their signature. Try to find relevant forums within your field and get stuck in. Don’t be spammy, just try to be useful and interactive. This should also lead to gaining some traffic.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Google's Page Rank
Page rank was invented by Larry Page, co-founder of Google. Page rank is intended to measure the importance of a website on the internet and is sculpted by the amount of links a page has pointing at it, and the quality of those links. It is not a measurement of how relevant a page is to a particular term...it just measures the importance of that page. Therefore, by increasing the page rank of a web page, we can increase the importance of that page. However, if the page is not relevant to the search phrase in question, it won’t show up in the results no matter how high the page rank is.
The page rank you can see displayed on the toolbar of your web browser is different to the actual page rank used by Google to calculate the results. The toolbar page rank goes from 0-10 where as the real page rank can run into the millions. The difference between the two values in unknown, however we do know that the toolbar page rank is not linear. A toolbar page rank of 6 is not twice the value of 3. An increase of 2-3 is fairly easy, whereby an increase from 4-5 would take a considerable amount more effort. From this we can’t assume that if a publisher has a website with a page rank of 5 and their competitor has a site with page rank 6, that the difference is neither large nor small. It could be that their real page rank is miles away, or maybe that they are actually quite close.
Page rank is definitely a grey area for SEO’s, and the calculation changes regulary. However it is safe to assume that the value of page rank is still vital in search engine rankings, and also that it measures the importance of a website, not the relevance. As this is the case, Link building is still of upmost importance to gaining a website higher rankings. Gaining high quality links from authoritative websites will no doubt increase your page rank and also your position in the results. It is also vital that you have a good variation of domains linking to your site. A broad link profile is always the best.
When coming up with a link building strategy, it is important that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try to have a varied approach; there are many ways in which to build links. Below is a list of four approaches that could be used together to produce a healthy link profile:
1. Links from authoritative domains
Possibly the most important step. Try to identify which domains are the most ‘important’ in your field, and how you could go about striking up a relationship and gaining a link. Examples could include relevant trade bodies or education centres.
2. Directories
Submitting your site to directories is a good way of gaining links from a large amount of different domains. Be careful when paying for links, this can be a dodgy tactic, and always make sure you place your site in the most relevant category.
3. Social Media
Setting up social media profiles and optimising them can be a great way of gaining links. Avoid being spammy and try to be ‘natural’ and you should reap the benefits.
4. Blogging
Setting up and writing a good quality blog can be another great tactic. Remember content is king, so keep your blog updated and full of great information and hopefully you’ll find people will want to link to your blog.
The page rank you can see displayed on the toolbar of your web browser is different to the actual page rank used by Google to calculate the results. The toolbar page rank goes from 0-10 where as the real page rank can run into the millions. The difference between the two values in unknown, however we do know that the toolbar page rank is not linear. A toolbar page rank of 6 is not twice the value of 3. An increase of 2-3 is fairly easy, whereby an increase from 4-5 would take a considerable amount more effort. From this we can’t assume that if a publisher has a website with a page rank of 5 and their competitor has a site with page rank 6, that the difference is neither large nor small. It could be that their real page rank is miles away, or maybe that they are actually quite close.
Page rank is definitely a grey area for SEO’s, and the calculation changes regulary. However it is safe to assume that the value of page rank is still vital in search engine rankings, and also that it measures the importance of a website, not the relevance. As this is the case, Link building is still of upmost importance to gaining a website higher rankings. Gaining high quality links from authoritative websites will no doubt increase your page rank and also your position in the results. It is also vital that you have a good variation of domains linking to your site. A broad link profile is always the best.
When coming up with a link building strategy, it is important that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try to have a varied approach; there are many ways in which to build links. Below is a list of four approaches that could be used together to produce a healthy link profile:
1. Links from authoritative domains
Possibly the most important step. Try to identify which domains are the most ‘important’ in your field, and how you could go about striking up a relationship and gaining a link. Examples could include relevant trade bodies or education centres.
2. Directories
Submitting your site to directories is a good way of gaining links from a large amount of different domains. Be careful when paying for links, this can be a dodgy tactic, and always make sure you place your site in the most relevant category.
3. Social Media
Setting up social media profiles and optimising them can be a great way of gaining links. Avoid being spammy and try to be ‘natural’ and you should reap the benefits.
4. Blogging
Setting up and writing a good quality blog can be another great tactic. Remember content is king, so keep your blog updated and full of great information and hopefully you’ll find people will want to link to your blog.
Monday, 22 February 2010
Keyword Implementation
By the time you get round to entering your keywords into your website, you should have conducted a good amount of research to make sure that you know what keywords to use and why you are using them. It is also vital that you target your page towards keywords that are directly related to your business and specifically what your website describes and offers the user. Choosing the wrong keywords can either result in having hardly any traffic, or more likely having a very high bounce rate (where visitors click on the website and leave immediately).
The first step is to take a good look at your website and make sure that each page has a specific purpose. Your website should be arranged so that each page describes an individual part of your business or service, this will make it easier for you to target each page with the correct keyword. Far too many people build websites and add pages to the site for the sake of adding pages. This can result in the message of the website being spread thinly across various pages and not only will that lead to SEO difficulties, anyone who has looked into website analytics will tell you that 90% of website visitors simply don’t hang around long enough to navigate through a poorly organised website. They need to get the information they are looking for straight away, or they will simply go back to Google and click on the next website. Don’t be afraid to reorganise your website, or even re-build it at this stage. Although this will take time and money; you will definitely benefit from increased productivity of the website.
Your website should by now be nice and focused, with each page targeting a different subject matter. Having conducted some keyword research, you should also know what keywords to put into what page. Targeting a page towards a keyword needs to be a focused effort with many elements of the page saying the same thing. Many people think that simply entering some meta tags will do the trick. This is certainly not the case. Let’s work through an example to explain how you can effectively target your pages. For the purpose of the example below, we will imagine that we are doing some SEO for a website that sells holidays in Greece, and that the page in question is focusing in on Corfu, and the keyword we have chosen to target the page for is ‘holidays in corfu’. We recommend putting the keyword in the following areas of the page:
Page URL:” www.exampleholidays.co.uk/holidaysincorfu”
Meta Title: “Example Holidays :: Holidays in Corfu”
Meta Description: “Example holidays; some of the finest packages available of Holidays in Corfu; Book now for early bird discount”
Meta Tags: “Holidays In Corfu, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, ”
H1 Tag: “Holidays in Corfu”
Text: “Holidays in Corfu” within first 100 words
Image Tags: “Holidays in Corfu” included in tags
The first step is to take a good look at your website and make sure that each page has a specific purpose. Your website should be arranged so that each page describes an individual part of your business or service, this will make it easier for you to target each page with the correct keyword. Far too many people build websites and add pages to the site for the sake of adding pages. This can result in the message of the website being spread thinly across various pages and not only will that lead to SEO difficulties, anyone who has looked into website analytics will tell you that 90% of website visitors simply don’t hang around long enough to navigate through a poorly organised website. They need to get the information they are looking for straight away, or they will simply go back to Google and click on the next website. Don’t be afraid to reorganise your website, or even re-build it at this stage. Although this will take time and money; you will definitely benefit from increased productivity of the website.
Your website should by now be nice and focused, with each page targeting a different subject matter. Having conducted some keyword research, you should also know what keywords to put into what page. Targeting a page towards a keyword needs to be a focused effort with many elements of the page saying the same thing. Many people think that simply entering some meta tags will do the trick. This is certainly not the case. Let’s work through an example to explain how you can effectively target your pages. For the purpose of the example below, we will imagine that we are doing some SEO for a website that sells holidays in Greece, and that the page in question is focusing in on Corfu, and the keyword we have chosen to target the page for is ‘holidays in corfu’. We recommend putting the keyword in the following areas of the page:
Page URL:” www.exampleholidays.co.uk/holidaysincorfu”
Meta Title: “Example Holidays :: Holidays in Corfu”
Meta Description: “Example holidays; some of the finest packages available of Holidays in Corfu; Book now for early bird discount”
Meta Tags: “Holidays In Corfu, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, ”
H1 Tag: “Holidays in Corfu”
Text: “Holidays in Corfu” within first 100 words
Image Tags: “Holidays in Corfu” included in tags
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Keyword Research
The first step of any online campaign is deciding what you want to be known for, particularly when aiming for a stronger presence on the search engines. These terms or search phrases that you wish to be seen for are called ‘keywords’. Researching and implementing these keywords into your website is crucial to the success of your website. It is vital that you look into both the search volume of each keyword and also the competition levels. By conducting a bit of research first you will gain a good understanding of how your market looks online, and also what keywords you could realistically achieve good positions for.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the url, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword.
The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer. You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition...this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the url, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword.
The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer. You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition...this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
A Little Intro to SEO
The process of search engine optimisation (SEO) is aimed at pushing a website further up the search engines for specified searches. This can be quite a difficult and time consuming process and is definitely one that requires a certain amount of patience. SEO involves both on-site and off-site activity and one must first analyse the website in question and carefully look into options for keywords to be used. There are many companies who specialise in SEO and their prices range greatly, as do the techniques they use. At the end of the day, it’s their results that matter the most so if you are considering paying a company to engage in SEO of your behalf, first make sure you are happy with their track record.
On-Site Optimisation
On-site optimisation is as the title suggests; it involves work carried out on a website and its aim is to make a website as search engine friendly as possible and also relevant to the searches involved. Typically, the work done on a website will be both technical and content based. Search engines use complicated formulas or ‘algorhythms’ to decide upon the placement of websites within their listings, and thus there are many factors involved at this stage. Once the keywords have been chosen, the first step is to make sure that all the content on the website is focused towards the keywords, and that the meta page titles/descriptions/tags are also keyword strong. This ensures that the search engines identify your website in relation to your chosen keywords. Technically, a website must be of a high quality and that includes factors such as page validation, load times and XML site maps etc. All these things can help you earn ‘brownie’ points with the search engines and therefore increase your positioning.
Off-Site Optimisation
Off-site optimisation is focused mainly on gaining a website inbound links. A major part of any search engines algorithm is the amount of links a website has coming in. However, not only do search engines judge on the quantity of links, they also judge the quality of links. A high quality link is worth so much more than hundreds of low quality links. A high quality link is usually a link coming from a website with an old domain name and a high page ranking that is relevant to you particular line of work. Having a link as close to the home page as possible also helps the cause. When acquiring a new link, it is important that you try to make sure that the ‘anchor text’ includes the keywords for your website. ‘Anchor text’ is the text that forms the link to your website. This text helps identify to the search engines what the link is all about, and goes a long way to helping boost your websites positioning.
There is much more to it than discussed in this article, but hopefully some of the points raised can go some way to making the process of SEO clearer.
On-Site Optimisation
On-site optimisation is as the title suggests; it involves work carried out on a website and its aim is to make a website as search engine friendly as possible and also relevant to the searches involved. Typically, the work done on a website will be both technical and content based. Search engines use complicated formulas or ‘algorhythms’ to decide upon the placement of websites within their listings, and thus there are many factors involved at this stage. Once the keywords have been chosen, the first step is to make sure that all the content on the website is focused towards the keywords, and that the meta page titles/descriptions/tags are also keyword strong. This ensures that the search engines identify your website in relation to your chosen keywords. Technically, a website must be of a high quality and that includes factors such as page validation, load times and XML site maps etc. All these things can help you earn ‘brownie’ points with the search engines and therefore increase your positioning.
Off-Site Optimisation
Off-site optimisation is focused mainly on gaining a website inbound links. A major part of any search engines algorithm is the amount of links a website has coming in. However, not only do search engines judge on the quantity of links, they also judge the quality of links. A high quality link is worth so much more than hundreds of low quality links. A high quality link is usually a link coming from a website with an old domain name and a high page ranking that is relevant to you particular line of work. Having a link as close to the home page as possible also helps the cause. When acquiring a new link, it is important that you try to make sure that the ‘anchor text’ includes the keywords for your website. ‘Anchor text’ is the text that forms the link to your website. This text helps identify to the search engines what the link is all about, and goes a long way to helping boost your websites positioning.
There is much more to it than discussed in this article, but hopefully some of the points raised can go some way to making the process of SEO clearer.
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