SEO 101 for laymen and newbies

Having had quite a few questions about different aspects of SEO, I think it’s time to do an SEO basics thread, with the aim of answering the basic questions and giving people an understanding of the basics… as I see it.

Its a long post, but I hope some people find it of some use.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation.

The ability to get somebody searching on Google, Bing or Yahoo to come and look at your website.

How?

Simple, keywords!

These are the words people type into a search engine to find what they are looking for. Eg if I type tax office into google, I will get millions of results. If I type in Stratford Tax Office I will get in a much more refined search. Getting your website onto the first page of these results is the art (some say religion) of SEO.

I’ve utilised SEO consultants, picked up books, and gained experience over the years by dabbling. SEO is a very emotive field, full of some genuinely knowledgeable people, but also plenty of back bedroom cowboys, including dodgy “blackhat” consultants that will try and cheat, take your money and end up you getting banned. So choose wisely if outsourcing!

So these are my views, and what has worked for me. Other people may have different ideas, some will say different things have a different importance, but at least after reading this, you will be armed to join the great SEO debate.

I’ve broken these down into “Onpage” and “Off Page” SEO, and order of importance.

On Page SEO – in other words things you change on your website or in your code.

1. URL - Ok, maybe too late for this, but if you’re a Taxi operator, then choose a URL with Taxi in the title. Mylocaltaxi.com sort of thing. Priceless free marketing.

2. Keywords – Do some research, if you were buying your product, what would you type into Google? I’m afraid no one cares that you are called ABC Ltd, and won’t type this into Google. You don’t have brand, so work out a set of keywords that you think you can achieve and will give you some targeted visitors. There’s plenty of tools out there to help you, one of my favourites is Keyword Software

3. Page Titles - Such a simple and effective fix. Go into your webcode and edit the page title between <title>Steves website</title> If you have a product per page, then get that keyword into the page title, and keep to the beginning of the title tag as close as possible. Try if you can (I never can!) to keep your title around the 64 character mark. Rumor has it Google will look more favorably if you don’t go over this, but don’t worry too much.

4. Page Content – This is your area to shine. There’s no excuses for laziness, no one knows your product better than you. Google loves content. Your page needs to be appealing to someone arriving on your site. If your page title is Steves Beer cans, then Google, you and any visitors will expect that page to be about beer cans. Sounds obvious? So why do so many people get it wrong?

In this daft example, the keyword you want to rank well for is “beer cans”. So the content should be all about beer cans, with keyword “beer cans” placed occasionally in the text.

There is something called a H1 tag, and this is used a primary heading for your content. So you need to get your keyword into this heading. eg <H1>Steves beer cans</H1>

Then you need to add the keyword a few more times into the content. Don't be daft about it, keep it readable and sensible, but it's recommended to add it at least once in bold (you can use <strong> or <b> tags).

If you have images in your content, then add the keyword into any alt tags, as this will help your page get indexed in things like Google Images.

Some SEO people and a lot of SEO tools will go on about keyword density, and until recently, I still believed it, but its cobblers, and don't worry about it. People will tell you that your keywords need to be 4% of the content, and there are mathematical formulas to work it out.. blah blah...

Put them in your page title, H1 tag, about 3 or 4 times in your content, once in bold, plus any image alt tags, and that should do you.

Key thing is, subtlety include your keywords, but keep your content readable and professional. If copy isn’t your thing, then engage a copy writer, just give them a brief and the keywords you are looking to incorporate.

5. Them Meta thingys – In the old days, things like meta tags held an important role in telling search engines what your site was, what the keywords were, and what description to display. They are still used by some search engines, but their importance gets downgraded every year. But still populate these fields. Every little helps!

In the head of your code, under the page title tags, you will see <meta name="keywords" content="blah,more blah,waffle”> Enter your keywords in here. But don’t go too mad! Keep them relevant to your content, and don't spam! - update - a school of thought now argues against having this tag as you are telling your competitors what you are optimizing for, and in reality, the search engines no longer use the keyword tag.

One meta tag that is still used is the description tag <meta name="description" content="add some good waffle for your site”> This will display under your page title on the search engine results. If you leave this blank, the search engines will grab some text from the web page, but better to tell Google and potential visitors about your site than letting Google guess.

Off Page SEO – or in otherwords stuff you can do without having to edit your website or code. Sometimes referred to as SEM (Search Engine Marketing).

1. Link Building - the basics – After Keywords, the single most important factor of SEO is Weblinks, or as Google see’s them, the currency of authority. The theory goes, if your website is a fantastic resource, has superb content, awesome products everyone wants, then people will naturally link to you. The more people that decide to link to you, Google will reward your status as a trusted resource and grant you a better place in the search engine rankings. With the advent of Google Plus, and ongoing updates and changes to Googles search algorithm, there is a lot of talk of the importance of links being reduced, but currently (Sep 2011) they are still very much alive and kicking.

Now the trouble is, everyone is link building. Ideally you want one way links, website B links to you. If you link back to website B, then that becomes a reciprocal link. No problem with this, in moderation. Also links are down to quality. You don’t want pages of spammy reciprocal links to sites completely unrelated to you, and you may actually get marked down.

Remember the golden rule, you have full control of who you decide to link to, and not who links to you. The search engines know this, so if you decide to link to a dodgy/porn/warez type site, then this is classed as linking to a “bad neighbourhood” and you could be penalised.

2. Obtaining Quality links – When you head off link building, what you are looking for are quality links, that will allow search engines to crawl them (index). In otherwords beware of the no follow tag (rel="nofollow"). Any links with a no follow tag offer little value from an SEO point of view, as search engines will skip over them, but, humans can still click on them, so they can be a good source of traffic. Classic example is twitter. Twitter displays nofollow links, but obviously a lot of people click on them, so poor SEO, but good traffic generators.

There a lots of ways of obtaining links, directories are a good source, both free and paid. Some free directories do nofollow links, so do some homework.

Article writing is another way. Write an informed article about your industry, submit it to article directories and hopefully people will link back to you. This can also be known as link baiting.

Blogs are an accepted way of generating links, that includes answering blogs as well as writing them. If answering, check to see if they are nofollow.

Forums, (like this one, leave your link in your signature), social networking sites, Facebook, Linked In etc. There are multitudes of ways of generating links.

3. Anchor text – This simply is the text you want to display when someone is linking to you. In other words think keywords! If your URL was SEOsteve.com you might want the displayed text to read SEO 101. Code wise, this would look like this:
<a href="http://seosteve.com">SEO 101</a>

Anchor text is extremely powerful. I personally would say it is the most important aspect of SEO, and even if your web page had poor content, little optimization, get 50 websites to show your URL on their homepage with your anchor text keyword, I’ll bet money you’ll get a decent ranking on Google.

4. PPC – aka Adwords. Google Adwords and similar give you the ability to short cut the SEO process, which is known as organic SEO, and go straight for the kill. In otherwords you take out adverts on Google and display in the sponsor links. The process is similar, you choose your keywords, then you decide a budget. When someone types in your keyword, Google holds a little auction, and the top 10 bids will display in the sponsor links on Page 1. The process happens in a split second, and the deepest pockets win.

But it doesn’t have to be expensive, and with Google regularly handing out £50 vouchers (just google “google vouchers”) it’s agood way to experiment for a few quid a day. The key to adwords is to tweak and test, tweak and test. The interface is straightforward and most newbies pick it up quite quickly.

If you can get a decent conversion going, ie x% of clicks on your advert = x% of sales on your site, then it can be quite profitable.

To learn more about adwords, just Google “Adwords”

Summary

The thing to remember with SEO is that far from being overly complicated, it is actually very laborious and time consuming. There are more complicated tips and tricks a good consultant can advise you on, but the basic fundamentals don’t really change. If you’re doing it yourself, then decide on the value of your own time not running your business, and generating revenue, versus the value of employing an SEO consultant who will take the pain from you.

But do your homework. Everyone will promise you “top of Page 1 Google”. You may be top of page 1, but not for any worthwhile keyword that will generate targeted traffic and potential customers. Be wary of being tied into 12 month contracts. I think 3 months is a realistic time to start to see results. Maybe not page 1, but an increase in position, increased links etc.

Happy SEO'ing!

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Steve

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[QUOTE=sjr4x4;4281]Having had quite a few questions about different aspects of SEO, I think it’s time to do an SEO basics thread, with the aim of answering the basic questions and giving people an understanding of the basics… as I see it.

Just seen this thread and found it very interesting thanks.

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A good little tip sheet this.

Even if you've read about SEO before, think it's always good to get a reminder to make sure you're still focusing on the areas that matter.

thanks a lot. this really helped me out a lot. now i know wot i need to do to get my site seen. thanks steve

dreamraven

thank you so much for the tips and the summary of SEO. I did read Rob Benwell Seo book. I was such a good book. I was a bit forget on his words about this SEO. Your SEO tips extremely refreshing my mind about those SEO stuff.Thank you so much!

Many thanks for the SEO info Steve.

Having build my own website, I found that to be the easy part compared to the SEO aspect. Website optimisation was a very steep learning curve involving much time-consuming reading around and research.

To have all the basics in one place - and so well explained will be a great help to many new to this and, a valuable 'check list' to those with more experience. Thanks.

Brilliant - I have to say that is just about the most readable, credible and fluff-free description of SEO/SEM I have read - worth the trouble of joining this forum by itself, actually!

thank you for this, very helpful and informative

Very nice! Thanks for that Steve.

Thanks for the info Steve.

I think I've got a much better handle on how this SEO stuff works now. Much appreciated! Can't believe I haven't read it before today!

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Chris Price - Tork UK
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