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Most SEO providers will give you a pretty standard list of what they do, things like keyword changes, directory submissions and even blog posts. But the list of things you could do is much longer. The most important are covered below. As a site owner you need to take a step back and ask, Are these the right things to be doing? Are there other things I should be doing, as well or instead? For sure, you won’t be able to do everything that could be done; you’ll have to choose a mix that delivers the best for you, within your budget. That’s a more demanding task. The main activities are:
See our blog post All about SEO for a convenient reference table listing most SEO activities. TitlesEvery page in your website can have its own title. Titles assist search engines in categorising the site and affect the display of found results. One of the first SEO tasks for a new site should be to assign meaningful titles to each page, reflecting the content of that page. This is a once-off task with a cost reflecting the number of pages, allow $100 to $200 depending on site size. Ideally this should be done in conjunction with keywords, which will reduce cost. Titles should be updated once or twice a year. Keywords (or metatags) that match popular, effective search termsEvery page on your site should have its own set of hidden keywords or metatags, again reflecting the content of that page. You can have lots of keywords per page but any more than 10 probably won’t help much and the first is the most important. The characteristics of a good keyword or key phrase are:
Getting your keyword right takes research and then some trial-and-error adjustments – and when you get there, the goal posts can shift or increased effort by a competitor can dislodge you. Keyword researchThe single most common mistake made in setting up SEO for a website – and one of the most damaging to results – is to choose keywords that you thing represent your business or service. A keyword is not an advertisement that is meant to attract people by its sound or imagery. The goal of a keyword is to match the words people are typing into Google when they are looking for your product or service. So, the people doing the searches get to choose the keywords – not you. And you find out what they are choosing by keyword research. Suppose you decide “pre-owned cars” best describes your product. That’s nice, perhaps, for an ad. But useless as a search term because only 590 a month search for that term in all of Australia. Try the advertising favourite “pre-loved cars” and it’s only 73 searches per month. You could even get to the top spot for “pre-owned cars” or “pre-loved cars” and go there often to admire your presence, but it won’t do your sales any good because no buyers are looking. Just you, admiring your top spot. What you need is “used cars” because 450,000 people a month search that term in Australia. This is where your buyers are. So, perhaps the single most important SEO rule: go where the buyers are. Use keyword research to get there. Content targetingYou target sub-markets through content specific to them. Most successful websites (like most successful businesses) cater to a range of sub-markets, offering each of them a tailored product or service that is directly accessible through easy navigation. Content targeting increases SEO traffic. Content expansionIt’s pretty crude, but the search engines value size. Load more content and you will get better rankings. Make it good, relevant content and you’ll do even better. Sales hype that is empty of information doesn’t amount to much. And make it unique information. A lot of SEO practitioners seem to be trapped in a pre-2010 world where Google saw content as content: they haven’t caught up that Google now compare content across the web and penalises sites which present duplicate information (RSS feeds are OK). BacklinksBacklinks have been critical to search engine rankings and post the 2010/2011 changes they remain important, but in a different way. Generally, the more links there are to your site, the higher it will rank. You can buy backlinks from a “backlink farm” and this has been a powerful technique, but Google has branded it as cheating and started a war against it. They are developing algorithms to detect large scale farming and are blacklisting offenders. (Once your site is blacklisted by Google it’s time to get a new url and start again.) Google values real, relevant links to sites that are themselves high ranking and is getting better at sifting those high quality links from the trash of farmed links. Building real backlinks is very time intensive and it’s slow to build momentum, so it’s important to start early and do some every month. Currently sites are getting away with low-level link purchasing that stays below Google’s radar, but take care and focus your main effot on links with real relevance. Some markets lend themselves to legitimate rapid link building through reseller and other referral techniques; this takes a bit of creativity and know-how. DownloadablesHaving downloadable information helps SEO rankings. A high-value downloadable can also build backlinks. Downloadable info does not have to be unique (it can, for example, repackage information from within your own website). “Parallel” contentContent is critical, both quality and quantity. You can expand your legitimate content and increase site traffic by providing information your clients will value, that perhaps is a step sideways from your main market. For example, if you are a hotel your site will focus on accommodation and facilities. But you might also include tourist information and local business information. Your site will be bigger and contain more information, that’s good for your SEO. Tourist information may also give you some good linking opportunities, to government and business websites. That’s good. If your clients find this additional information of value, it will enhance their user experience and give them a reason to return to the site. That’s directly good for your SEO. This information may also attract people who are not intending to do business with you – for example, they are above or below your price bracket – but who nevertheless want the information. They add to your traffic numbers without adding to your sales, that’s true – but Google values site popularity and rewards it with more visitors, a feedback loop that is accelerated by introducing extra traffic from “parallel” content. And, one day, some of this non-buyer traffic move up or down the price range and they may refer others who are in your price range. “Parallel” information can be especially valuable in balancing the sales focus of a retail site, in creating access to good links where they are not otherwise available and in building an “authority” stance not normally very accessible to retailers (the authority you build in your information area will boost your site overall). In summary, what we are doing in this example is creating a second source of rankings for the site, one reflecting the accommodation offer and another reflecting the tourist information offer. And that makes your site more impressive to a search engine. “Authority” contentGoogle has long used the concept of “authority” or “reference” site. Typically they have tens of thousands of pages of reference or authoritative information. While most sites get a Google page rank of 4 or 5, there are a reported 12 sites globally with a 10 rank (Google itself and some large government sites like usa.gov) and another 150 or so ranked 9 (universities, government departments, very large corporates and link-based sites). Links with these sites are very powerful, but page rank 6 and 7 sites are good. More recently, Google has started rating the authority of individuals on the web, especially in a social media context, according to their assumed influence. Information which is fact based and has no sub-agenda (ie, it’s not intended directly to drive sales or opinion) also scores well on “authority” and adds weight to your site White papers and professional articles are good tools to build authority; so are books (especially if your publish them to resellers). Even posts on high ranking blogs will help. Smart phone appSmart phone apps that are more than a novelty toy can increase traffic to a site they integrate with and enhance the perceived user experience by making the site (and thus the visitor) cooler. Mounting your app to various app markets also helps. Glide Strategic is a proven app developer for mobile devices and internet; call us to sound out your options. RemarketingBuyers visit an average two to three competing websites before approaching a vendor (they may visit more information sites which are non-sales). Remarketing is when someone visits your site but leaves without buying and you follow them to other sites where you show them an ad for your product. As they already know you, they are more likely to respond. Remarketing works when it is done, but it is technically complex (and thus expensive), not always practical and has privacy issues. It is most powerful when the vendor has in place a wide network of advertising on known related traffic or better still owns those sites. Think about remarketing if you believe, for example, that a lot of your customers are going to you and then to a price comparison site that accepts paid advertising. Advanced use of search resultsAnother technically complex (and thus expensive) technique involves permanently mounting custom search responses as pages of the website and getting Google to index them. This requires a site able to deliver personalised content on the fly, but even in Australia it has helped sites get tens of thousands of pages indexed. If you have a strong flow of searches initiated within your site, a flexible budget and a keen desire to be on the fast track, at least talk with us about this option. Internal linksLinks within your site – from one screen to another – improve your site rating and thus your rankings and traffic. Of course, the links should be meaningful and not circular. Techniques for enhancing internal links include cloud tags (where the popularity of a link is represented by the size of its name in a cluster of tags) and related post listings at the bottom of pages (essentially a pre-set search result, very search engine friendly). This is an often overlooked, low-cost way of enhancing the SEO of an existing site. ImagesImages in your website can be searched. Search by image is a minority approach but it is increasing. Ideally every image on your site will be individually meaningful and relevant and it will have its own individual SEO settings (keywords etc), which will have to be adjusted occasionally. The same can apply to illustrations. VideosVideos can be a very powerful addition to any website, but they need their own SEO settings to deliver maximum search value. Videos can also be YouTube mounted with links to the website, adding to their impact. Again, the video needs its own SEO settings. Incidentally, viewing your own video from YoutTube on your own site earns less SEO credit that viewing it from your own site server and separately mounting it to YouTube (it’s also less work and expense). Optimisation for search botsNot even Google can visit every site every month, so they send out search bots, little virtual robots that search sites and report basic things like page titles, metatags, content and links. These bots use algorithms that are sometimes designed to emulate human behaviour and, surprisingly, they often do.
If you want a good ranking, make friends with bots. Map listingGoogle Maps deserve much more attention from SEO practitioners. A map adds visual appeal that plain text entries lack, and it’s placed high up on the first page. Sometimes a map entry can position a site ahead of other sites with much more powerful SEO. Map listings – you guessed it – require their own SEO settings. Map listings can also be double edged as they invite and display user comments. Negative comments get as much prominence as positive endorsements and they can be near-impossible to remove. Building internal linksSites with lots of internal links (that are not a closed loop) rank better. In other words, if your site presents lots of inter-related information and organises it so that browsers can easily jump to the bits they want, you will be rewarded with a higher rank. See The true believers at Google for more. Lots of links implies a bigger site (more pages, more words). For better or worse, bigger sites rate better than smaller sites. Listing with multiple search engines and directoriesGoogle is 80% of the search engine market, including Google-direct searches and searches where the results are provided by Google. For cost effectiveness then most SEO focuses solely on Google, because Google delivers more traffic return on your effort. Better funded SEO campaigns can look to Yahoo, Bing.com and many others. Doing this won't improve your ranking on any one of the search engines, but it will rank yo in more places and this can lead to more traffic. Often more effective than additional generalist search engines is a focus on local search engines (limited geographical reach) and vertical search engines (that deal only with your subject area). Social mediaSocial media like Twitter, Facebook and blogs, are the fashion of the minute and they are fully hyped. Do they have value in driving traffic? Absolutely. And it will grow. Are they for everyone? Not yet. Are they easy? Definitely not. Are they a good value for money web investment? That depends on your market and how much of an eye you have to the future. Google AnalyticsSet your site up for Google analytics. Google provides a wealth of really valuable data to help you track you results day by day and refine your SEO settings. It can take a while to learn but the feedback is invaluable as long as it is followed regularly. Experiment!The truth about SEO and Google is out there – but no-one knows it all and it changes regularly. Whatever you know, there is still more – and what worked today may not work tomorrow. So, a guiding rule for SEO success is to experiment and to persist For sure, a site which is done and left will gradually lose position. Summary of SEO activitiesSEO is concerned only with moving people from search engines to the website. A lot of SEO activity has no visible impact on the website (for example, it’s to do with matching hidden metatags to the popularity of certain search terms, page titles, image names and tags and abbreviated urls). The primary on-site concerns of SEO are with:
Decision on these factors have direct implication for website design, especially in relation to the number of pages and complexity of internal links. It’s wrong to build a website with SEO as the primary goal (customer value should be the primary goal) but it is worth noting that:
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