The ever developing skill of learning how Search Engines position sites on their organic search listings is known as Search Engine Optimisation. Natural or ‘organic’ lists form the main body of a SE page. Paid listings are separate to natural listings. The paid listings are typically in a yellow section at the top of the page, and in a column down the right hand side. The ‘natural’ listings are straight from the main index. Search Engines use algorithms to determine a website’s relevancy and importance. This is how they decide on which order to place them in.
Of course, we would like to be as high as possible on page one. A site that’s half way down page seven is unlikely to be bombarded with enquiries! No-one knows all the factors that Search Engines (SE’s) use to determine your rank. They don’t want us to know.
Nevertheless, an entire industry has evolved around Search Engine listings. We have Search Engines constantly developing new technology on the one hand. Causing much mystification about their methods! On the other hand, there’s Search Engine Optimisation. Optimisation specialists test, quantify and evaluate a myriad of indicators that affect a site’s ratings.
On-Page and Off-Page considerations are taken into account. A certain amount of page ranking weight can be attributed to off web geographic influences. SEO can’t control these though. (We will cover off page optimisation in a separate article.)
SEO ‘On-Page’
This involves making your web pages ‘friendlier’ to the Search Engines. This website configuration is fairly simple. For instance: Seeding keywords in suitable places and at the correct density; internal-linking, using H1 & H2 header tags, and to a lesser extent, using meta-tags.
That might sound like gobbledy-gook, but don’t be alarmed! On-Page optimisation is now known to have the smallest affect on your page rank. In truth, many argue its relevance has disappeared altogether! In the past it was easy to affect Search Engines with on-page SEO. Not any longer though.
Having said that, if the website benefits from off page optimisation, then on page work should be looked at. When that’s happened, on-page factors can be optimised.
Some Words Of Caution… Avoid doing SEO on keywords that have millions of listings. For example, on Google’s Search Engine you’ll see 70 million listings in the UK for the term Car Insurance. Far too much competition at the start.
And Yet – When I search for “Southampton Car Insurance”, it comes down to a more manageable 300K. (If car insurance in Southampton was my business!) Though still large, this is a much more manageable figure.
I could expect to get ranked far more easily for the longer phrase. In fact, if I wanted to rate for phrases like ‘Car Insurance’ it would probably take a long time and a very large budget. I’d be up against massive multi-nationals! Not a wise choice at all – and actually not the best way to go about things either.
A precise description is much more valuable to us. These ‘long tail’ phrases might contain a number of specific keywords. If your market’s very competitive, you could be selecting seven word phrases. Usually, a long-tail phrase is three or four words.
In general, our recommendation is to begin SEO’ing with keyword phrases that reveal fewer than 500,000 results. However, if the websites at the top of the listings aren’t well optimised, we may stretch to a higher count. As our back links increase, we’ll start to rate more highly on the bigger search terms as well. If we put in enough effort, we can go after those big phrases in 3-12 months time. This line of attack starts with more focus. We go for the phrases that people who are looking to buy would use.
You should also build back links to various different pages – and not just your website’s homepage. Google and the other Search Engines like this ‘deep linking’. Category or Product Group pages are a good example. It’s worth driving specific search terms to these pages – they often have links to lots of other product pages. Thus – don’t restrict the back links to just one page. The managing and listing of individual sub-pages is receiving growing attention from the major Search Engines.
Author: Scott Edwards. Try www.jasonkendall.co.uk or HERE.