It is also a field that changes quickly, as Search Engines – like Google continue to shift the goal posts as they modify and improve the way they rank pages. Further all these ranking algorithms are closely guarded secrets, so the exact location of said goal posts, aren’t actually known by anyone outside Google.
However there is a lot that is known. What I am going to focus on in this article are the basics, and this article is targeted at the non-technical website owner, enthusiastic about the essentials.
The field of SEO is generally split into two distinct topics. “ON Page” and “OFF Page” SEO.
ON Page SEO
ON page SEO is the simple part. It is about tweaking the content of your website, to ensure that Search Engines can look upon your site in the most favorable light possible. The following list includes the most crucial aspects of On Page SEO. If you do not know what all of these terms mean, that’s ok, but the person that develops your site should definitely be on top of this..
- Have a keyword suitable title tag for each page.
- Have a keyword appropriate description meta tag for every page.
- Utilize H1, H2, H3 & tags throughout your pages to spotlight the key content of each page, and underline those keywords to Google.
- Have plain text links internally for all your pages. (A footer is useful for this)
- Include keywords, in the page path. eg www.site.com/services/keyword/
- Include keywords in alt tags for each image, so Google attributes value to your site’s images.
- Have a content rich site full of useful info for people, this will naturally create a keyword rich site.
- The larger your site the better. The more content google can index the better. A great way to add to your site over time is through a blog. (like this one) This also gives useful industry information to your viewers.
-Blog writing also keeps your website fresh, update frequency is also something Google considers.
If you don't know about any of this stuff, that isn't a problem. There are many companies out there. One example would be Icreate Solutions. They are known for there innovative designs.
OFF Page SEO
OFF page SEO is a tricky one. One of the main ways Google measures your site’s importance vs all the other sites out there, is by how many other sites link to your one. If your website has 200 incoming links, and your competitor has 2, all other things being equal, Google will consider your site far more relevant and list it higher.
Getting other sites to link to yours, is not that simple and is one of the key activities SEO companies traditionally offer. Commonly called “link building”. Google does not like to be tricked though, and the old techniques of building thousands of incoming links automagically via networks of spammy websites, no longer works. Infact you would be penalised for this. Quality SEO companies don't engage in this activity. Google now measures all inbound themselves for their quality and importance.
A great way to increase inbound links, is to publish quality content out there on the interweb, with links back to your website. This might be on Social Media, or even sites like articlebase. com, squidoo, youtube, digg and so forth
Also posting useful (non spammy) comments on other quality websites, with a discreet backlink – is a good strategy.
This is clearly a lot of work, a good idea is to have a long term approach at off page SEO, and make frequent small hits at it. Or engage a good SEO company to assist with an off page strategy.
Social Media & Content Creation I mentioned before it is good to have a large site, and even more important to have a freshly updated site. Well a good way to do that is to use your blog. Write an article weekly. Make it useful. Google will like that content is changing every time it pays a visit, over time the indexable content of your site will continue to grow and grow!
The other thing that is cool about blog pages, is they act as new entry points to your website. If you write a blog reviewing the new xyz widget your business sells, and an xyz widget is a relatively unique product. There is a chance your article might just show top on google for a search of xyz widget. With time, blog pages can have a large impact on your sites traffic.
Make the most out of the fantastic article you have just written, and hit your Social Media channels, with a quick excerpt and a link back to your article. Get some eyes reading it.
Also your site needs Social Media buttons. Allowing visitors to Facebook like, Google plus, tweet or even Pinterest pages. This is good simply because;
- It helps spread the word about your site.
- It is widely thought that social measures, are going to be used more and more by Search Engine algorithms. Particularly the Google Plus button. A site with 20 Google pluses, will rank higher than a site with none. Apparently this is simply not happening yet, but it is likely just a matter of when, so better to start building some social recommendations right now.
The PPC option
PPC stands for pay per click. Its paid advertising. PPC's are quite advantageous for people with like property advertising. Google’s version of this is Google Adwords. Many websites, that do not list on page 1 organically in a Google could bring a reliable stream of traffic to their site through paid advertising. You can advertise for as little as a $1 a day, and can be scaled up and down as necessary. It can be a good supplement to your SEO efforts to get the phone ringing now, while your website climbs the stairs of Google.
Summary
SEO is a journey. The days of getting to number one easily are gone, there is just too much competition. You need a site that is built right, that is number 1. However you also have to commit to a long term strategy of quality content publishing, social interaction, and quality link building. It's a big task, but like any big task over time it can simply be managed with lots of small consistent efforts.
Also the more you do it, the easier it will get.
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