WEB DESIGN DIGITAL MARKETING BRANDING ADVERTISING
Keyword Research Definitely number one on the list; your entire search engine optimisation programme will revolve around your chosen Keywords. Which search terms do you want your website to be found for? Sometimes this will be obvious, for example a firm of solicitors in Brighton will want to be found for Brighton solicitors or solicitors in Brighton. Sometimes more research will be required. How to define your keywords Ĵ Ĵ Seek the opinion of your customers, employees, family and friends: what would they search for? Ĵ Ĵ Run some example searches yourself: if your competitors dominate the results pages this is an indicator that you ve hit on the right terms Ĵ Ĵ Use an online keyword research tool. Research services are offered by sites such as Wordtracker or Keyword Universe, but use with care: their data is often US-centric and does not include local search data Ĵ Ĵ Choose one or two phrases only and concentrate your efforts on those. Choosing too many phrases means you spread your efforts thinly and end up with many poorly optimised phrases, rather than a small number of well optimised phrases. Website Copy Now you know what keywords you are targeting you need to write Website Copy that focuses on them. Keyword density is the measure of how many times a keyword is repeated compared to the overall content of a web page. If a keyword appeared five times out of a word count of 100 the keyword density would be 5%. An appropriate keyword density is around 3-5%. Anything more could be seen as spamming and search engines could penalise your site. Consider highlighting your keywords using bold or italics. This helps search engines understand that these words are important.
Page Headings Ensure your page uses properly defined Page Headings, using the appropriate HTML syntax. Place keywords in the headings as this helps search engines understand that the words are important. HTML provides for hierarchical structural mark-up of headings. That is, the main page heading is defined as Heading 1 (HTML = <h1>), sub-headings are Heading 2 (<h2>) and so on. Many sites simply use larger standard text to indicate headings, however these are not seen as hierarchically important by search engines; it is very important the <hn> convention is used. META Tags META Tags are information about your website that is contained within the underlying HTML code, rather than being visible on the page itself. Whilst these only have a small effect on your website s search engine ranking there are still compelling reasons to you use them. META Description The META Description is for a short (150 characters) description about each web page. This description is not necessarily influential on a page s ranking; however it is used as the descriptive text that appears on the search engine results page. This is your opportunity to sell your website and encourage clicks. Ensure each page on your website has a unique META Description. This will help search engines differentiate between your pages and help the potential visitor decide if they want to visit your site. META Keywords META Keywords is simply a long list of keywords that used to be used by search engines to help them understand what each page is about. They have no effect on a page s ranking; however they are a good place to type common misspellings, so do make use of them.
Page Titles Each page on you website should have a Page Title. This is different to a Page Heading. The Title is the line of text that appears at the top of your browser window. Most importantly, the keywords contained in your Page Title contribute to your page s search engine ranking. The Page Title is also used by search engines as the main link by which people can visit your website. So ensure Page Titles are keyword-rich, to boost your ranking, yet keep them human-readable to encourage people to click through from the search engines results pages. Keep content fresh and relevant Search engines love new content. If search engines detect that your page content (particularly the homepage) never changes, they will reduce the frequency by which they read your site, and this could also have a detrimental effect on your ranking. Ideas for keeping your content fresh Ĵ Ĵ Latest news area: snippets of latest news from your company, that click through to the articles in full Ĵ Ĵ Blogs: why not publish a corporate blog, with interesting content about the latest developments within your company or industry? Ĵ Ĵ Newsfeeds: you can embed industry news in your website, provided by news syndication services. This is an easy way of keeping the content fresh as someone else has written the content! Use with care though, as they usually encourage visitors to click away from your site to read more Ĵ Ĵ What s new: reserve an area of your homepage to show a sentence or two about other new pages on your website Ĵ Ĵ Promotional banners, leading through to content you want to promote Ĵ Ĵ Do a full review of your content at least once a year Ĵ Ĵ A Content Management System can make this process very easy
On-site links Search engines generally start their journey on your homepage and then follow links so they can read your entire site. You need to make this process very simple. Anchor Text The text which forms your site links should accurately describe the destination page. This text is known as the Anchor Text. Search engines use this text to help them understand what the destination page is about. It is common for websites to use Click here for. This is bad practice, as click here is not describing the destination. Visitors know what a hyperlink looks like, there is no need to instruct them to click here. HTML links, not JavaScript or Flash Some websites use JavaScript or Flash to produce snazzy navigation buttons. Search engines cannot process JavaScript or Flash, and will not be able to follow links produced in this way. Modern techniques can make this possible; however it is strongly recommended that links are HTML only, to guarantee search engine visibility. Site Map Site Maps provide search engines with a bird s eye view of your website and can help them understand the relationship between pages. For very small pages a Site Map is not necessary, however if your website has many pages, with more than one level of navigation hierarchy, a Site Map is essential. Most search engines actively encourage website owners to submit site maps, particularly for large ecommerce sites.
Domain name / URLs Having your keywords within your domain name and page file name will really boost your search engine ranking. For example, if you are a solicitor in Brighton, consider having a domain name such as www.brightonsolicitor.co.uk. It is, of course, more common to have your company name as your web address, but many companies have realised the importance of keyword URLs. For example, the retailer B&Q s website is actually www.diy.com! It s not just the domain name itself that is important. The page names are also important places to include keywords. If one of your web pages is about selling widgets, then the URL ought to be www.companyname.co.uk/selling-widgets. Unfortunately, many websites use technical jargon in their URLs, for example www.companyname.co.uk/index.asp?id=165413&sessionid=5445142 this is normally the result of using an old Content Management System but is a great opportunity missed. Content Management Systems (CMS) If you use a Content Management System to update your website, it should facilitate all the checkpoints above. This is not always the case however, and some old or poorly built Content Management Systems can have a negative effect on your website s search engine rankings. Does your CMS: Ĵ Ĵ Allow you to write enough copy on each page? Remember search engines love text! Ĵ Ĵ Produce W3C-compliant HTML code? Ĵ Ĵ Correctly declare Page Headings? Ĵ Ĵ Prompt you to write META tags? Ĵ Ĵ Prompt you to write effective Page Titles? Ĵ Ĵ Make it simple for you to post regular news, blogs and promotions to keep the content fresh? Ĵ Ĵ Help you write appropriate on-site links? Ĵ Ĵ Produce search engine friendly URLS?
Off-site links By off-site links we mean links to your website from another website. This may be last in the list but it is by no means least. In fact, inbound link development is one of the most important things you can do to increase your site s search engine rankings. Every time a website links to your site, search engines interpret it as a vote of confidence in your site. Not only will you benefit from some extra traffic from visitors clicking the link, you will also benefit from increased search engine ranking. Quality and quantity Links from websites in the same field as yours are much more valuable than links from unrelated websites. If the site that links to you is popular itself, some of this popularity is transferred to your site. Anchor text If possible, the incoming link text should contain your target keywords. This helps to increase your ranking for the keywords you have chosen. Social networking sites Consider setting up your own pages on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, with clear links to you website. If you have something interesting to say, people will follow you and are more likely to visit your website. And remember: SEO never ends! Search engine optimisation is an ongoing process. There are only ten places on the all-important first results page and your competitors are out to do better than you! Review your web statistics Make sure you have a decent web reporting tool installed so you can see how many visitors you are getting. What keywords are they finding you for? Which pages are popular? Which aren t? Armed with information like this helps make adjustments to your SEO campaign. Competition Check out the performance of your competitors regularly? If they appearing higher than you what are they doing that you are not? Patience Be patient. By implementing the checkpoints in this document you are well on your way to better rankings. However, search engines don t update their databases immediately and changes may take a few weeks to filter through to the rankings. New websites in particular take time to be accepted by search engines, but it WILL happen.