Common Sense
A lot is written about search engine
optimisation, and although you can find broad agreement amongst
the many ‘gurus’ out there, often you’ll find
that there is conflicting advice as to what the best methods
are to ensure your site gets to those coveted Top 10 spots on
Google, MSN et al.
Some will tell you that authoritative links from other websites
are best, others that syndicated content will reap the most
reward. You’ll hear arguments about keyword density, meta
tags, on-page copy - and many more besides.
If you’re new to the whole SEO melting pot, this vast
array of apparently random how-tos can be enormously confusing,
whether you’re looking to undertake some steps yourself,
or whether you’re looking for an agency who seems to have
the answer. At it’s most basic, there can be a real trust
issue - can you be sure that the people you’re reading
/ talking to *really* know best?
So, what can we add to what you’ve already heard? Firstly,
let’s work it down to some general rules of thumb that
we can expand on...
1: The older your website, the better your chances
2: Meta tags are still relevant
3: Keywords in your text are important
4: Webpages should be written for real people.
To give some more detail in each case...
1: Most search engines, but particularly Google, will place
added weight against older websites. There are some caveats
to this, but generally if you have a site that has been in existence
for a couple of years or more, then it will have some ‘trust’
associated with it. Combine this with well honed SEO and you
should soon see your site jumping up the listings. Newer sites
- especially brand new ones - will by their nature need a longer
gestation period to fulfil their potential.
2: The old chestnut, meta tags (code that contains descriptive
text and keywords relating to your webpages). It’s a moot
point as to how much relevance ANY search engine places on these,
but you should be paying particular attention to your title
and description tags. Whether a search engine pays attention
to them or not, they’re the two elements that your entry
on ANY search page will show, and you’ll see a real difference
if you take the time to word them in a relevant, readable way.
3: Keyword relevancy in the text on your page is pretty much
vital. This essentially means that the terms you wish to rank
well for should appear - in a certain fashion - on your webpages.
Whether in your navigation, headlines, sub headers or body text,
this still remains probably the most important - and hardest
to achieve - area when it comes to proving the worth of your
site to the search engines. How you actually format and incorporate
your keyword text throughout the copy on your webpages is again,
a bit of a no brainer. Providing you’re using CSS correctly,
you can quickly and easily ensure that your text appears as
you’d like, even when used in combination with the ‘standard’
<H1>, <H2> etc HTML tags that still carry weight.
4: This is sometimes the most difficult point to communicate,
but is actually one of the few constants on which your website
will stand or fail. Yes, search engine optimisation is important
- it can alter the volume of traffic your website receives significantly,
and be assured that this does translate into increased sales.
However, if your page is overoptimised, and doesn’t effectively
communicate what your site is about, you’ll lose custom.
It really isn’t rocket science - simply keep your web
content to a high standard of written English, incorporate your
keywords in a legible and reasonable way, and you’ll appeal
to both the search engines and human visitors.
To close - a lot of SEO is really about employing common sense
and thinking about what works well with your existing marketing.
There is a lot more to search engine success than the 4 points
above, but these should serve as fairly consistent ‘standards’
that you can employ for a while yet to improve and consolidate
your search engine rankings.
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