Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short is the process of ensuring your website is positioned in search engines for the relevant keywords.

Why should anyone bother about search engines? Well you go out and buy a domain name and then probably buy some website hosting for your website. You spend time learning how to create your web pages and possibly use a website publishing tool such as WordPress – you then spend hours creating your website. Then what? For many people it is just the pleasure of creating something new that drives them, yet even these people would prefer that someone actually visits their website or blog and appreciates the effort they have made.

If you are creating a website to promote a business or to earn money for you and your family then getting your website (and the individual pages that make it) up listed in search engines will be very important to you. Without this free listing in search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo you will not get many or any visitors to your website. Of course you may decide that your business has to make money online and if you are selling goods or a service then using paid advertising is a viable and important option, just remember that for every 100 paid clicks on advertising programmes such as Google AdWords you may only get 1 or 2 customers. It therefore makes sense to know how to get listed in search engines for free, and what you can do to help get your website well positioned for search terms used by people to find your product or service.

Search Engines Most people (well everyone) who uses the Internet has used a search engine and the three most commonly used is Google, MSN Live (Bing) and Yahoo. Many other search engines exist yet these three are used in many western countries such as Britain, France, United States, and Canada. Google is probably still the most popular search engine and around about 60% of all worldwide searches are on this search engine. So you really need to get listed by Google, Bing and Yahoo.

If you are starting a new website from scratch the easiest way to get listed in Google is to use software such as WordPress that automatically lists your content on a specialist search engine called Technorati – this then gets searched regularly by Google and other search engines who then list your website / blog. Another alternative is to have an associated blog – say on blogger.com where you then have links to your new website or blog. This provides you with free inbound links to your own site. By creating new unique content you will find that other people will link to your blog / website and this will also improve your position in search engines such as Google. Generally speaking the more natural inbound links you have the higher Google will position your website.

Reciprocal Link Exchanges

You can also increase the number of links to your site by exchanging links with other websites / webmasters. A number of years ago this was the way to go to get inbound links and while this method still works to a certain extent you should not overdo it. If you plan to get reciprocal links for your website or blog I personally would not use software that promised to automate the process, you need to spend time finding a relevant and ideally related topic website and then write a personal e-mail to the website owner asking them to consider giving you a reciprocal link. Just remember most webmasters will receive several similar requests each week and most will end in the spam folder, so your e-mail has to be genuine and distinct to get any chance of being read, not least acted upon. I usually spend at least 20-30 minutes or more to get just one reciprocal link. In most cases Google will just ignore links created by link exchanges so do not spend too much time on this. If you do decide to reciprocate links then make sure you have the Google toolbar installed on your favourite browser and enable Page Rank in the toolbar. This is one way that Google measures the popularity and “worth” of a website / web page. If a page has a zero Page Rank it could be that Google has not yet ranked it, or it could be that it is not considered relevant and gets a zero Page Rank. In the worse case scenario it could be a black listed web page which Google does not rank or list in its search engine. If you get a link from a website that has been removed from the Google search engine listing then there is a good chance that you will damage your own position with Google (if you exchange links with the site). This is often known as linking with bad neighbourhoods – linking with websites that deliberately try and get higher search engines positioning by using techniques banned / discouraged by Google.

One such method is three way links – that is where a webmaster or link developer will offer you a link on another website if you link to their one. Sometimes they will offer 2-5 links just for one link to the website that they are promoting. When I get e-mail offers such as this they go into my spam folder, I would suggest you do the same. I tend to work on the basis of better safe than sorry. If you do decide to have reciprocal links then work on the basis of getting 2-3 good links a week/month, take time and create relevant content pages related to your link(s) and place the link to the reciprocating website on the page so that people will find it and visit the other site. This type of link exchange will get people to visit your site and to the site you have reciprocated with, it involves getting increased number of visitors to each site, not just your own. I would not recommend creating reciprocal link pages where you simply list the websites you are linking with, often these pages will be called links.html or resources.html – in most cases Google will ignore links on pages such as this.

Buying Paid Links Never buy links unless you are willing to risk your website being removed from search engines listings. There is no doubt that many successful websites do buy link to try and improve their position in search engines, however you are taking a big risk in doing so and I would not recommend this as a course of action.

Directories Directories such as DMOZ – http://www.dmoz.org/ or the Open Directory Project are where websites that have been checked by real people (editors) and are listed under their country / region / topic. Often pages in this directory have a good Page Rank and a listing on this directory will help get your website listed in search engines. It can often take a long time (if ever) to get listed in DMOZ and your website / blog should be well established before you apply for a listing. Other directories often involve payment for being reviewed and added. For directories with a high Page Rank on the page you will be listed on then it may be worth spending the money to do this. Just remember that Google reduces / increases Page Rank on a website / web page on a regular basis. If the directory is a respected one where only good quality (no spam websites) are listed then Google will often look favourably upon it. Google has for several years downgraded the value it assigns to a directory listing due to the number of copycat directories used to make money from Advertising programmes such as Google AdSense, or as ways of making money. If you can get your website listed in a specialist directory that is edited / managed by real people (rather than automatically using software) then it can help improve traffic (visitors) to you site as well as improve your position in search engines.

How to Optimise a WordPress Website There is no secret to getting well positioned in search engines, there is many ways to make sure you don’t get well positioned. Here are some of my suggestions on improving your search engine visibility.

Write great content and create an interesting and informative blog / website. Add unique content that you have created, include pictures and other media where possible.
Use short relevant unique titles for each blog post / page. The title should relate to the topic covered in the WordPress post or page.
Structure your writing to have headings and sections. Make your headings / sections on the page stand out by formatting the titles of each section using Bold / Strong.
Implement permalinks and incorporate the title of your post / page in the URL web address. Before doing this read the section on WordPress permalinks on the WordPress.org site.
Install the plugins for WordPress search engine optimisation and WP Super cache. This will add appropriate Meta tags to each of your pages / posts. The WP Super cache will speed up the delivery of each web page to the reader (and to search engines).
Structure your WordPress powered site using a combination of permanent content using WordPress Pages and update your site often using WordPress Posts – linked to relevant categories.

Optimising a Traditionally Designed Website A website created using website design software such as Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web or other software package allows you to edit the underlying html code that makes up each web page. To improve a web pages search engine position then add Meta tags that provide a description and keyword listing for each page. Some (many) search engines now ignore these Meta tags. Your site will not be penalised for having them if they accurately reflect the content of the website and web page. The Meta tags I often use are listed below, these come in your Head section of a web page and can be seen when looking at the code using a website design editor. <title>Your Page Title should be unique for Each web page</title> <meta content=”Add a short description of the subject covered in your web page, keep it less than 30 words.” /> <meta content=”put in your keywords separated by a comma,like this” /> <meta content=”document”/> <meta content=”ALL”/> <meta content=”Global”/> Depending on the document type (HTML loose, HTML transitional, strict, XHTML transitional, XHTML strict) the coding will vary slightly. There is other Meta Tags that can be used and these are important when creating online learning content and where the pages have an academic or scientific background.

Using H1 and H2 tags

The H tags go from H1 to H6, with H1 the most important and should be used to tag the main titles or sections of your web page. The html code looks like this: <h1>Website Design Using Templates</h1> or if it is a sub-topic or section use other H tags such as <h2> Basically you are then telling search engines that <h1> tagged titles are the most important content headings <h2> second most important, <h3> third most important headings. I tend to use only H1 and H2 tags in my websites. When creating your web page structure it into sections and give each a relevant Title and code this with a <h1> or <h2> tag, this lets search engines know the main sections of your web page and will possibly help rank the page better in search results related to that topic. Try and incorporate into the Title the main keywords people would use to search for information you are writing about.

Keywords

Keywords are simply the words or short phrases used by people when they search for content. In the past many people used a single word to search for things, now with billions of web pages on the Internet most people will be more sophisticated in using search and use 2 to 5 words, or a short phrase to find more specific information. By understanding that search engines try and make the best match between what someone is searching for (keywords) and the list of web pages in its index then by knowing keywords or search terms people are using and incorporating this into:

your web page title
web address (URL)
and main sections on the page using H1 and H2 meta tags

By doing the above you often have a greater chance of being listed by the search engine in its first two-three pages of results. As many people will not look beyond the third page of a search engines results you can understand how important it is to create web pages that match what people are looking for.

Authority Sites Google especially and other search engines like to find websites and web pages that act as authority sites, basically where real, unique information on a topic or subject can be found. By taking your time, doing a bit of research and careful writing on a topic you can increase your chances of being seen as an authority on a topic. Don’t expect to achieve this in five minutes unless you are a real expert in a subject, for most of us it will involve reading, researching and learning. Do not just copy other peoples work as this is plagiarism and can get your site blacklisted by search engines as well as a legal bill for breaking someone else’s copyright. If you consider the case of someone writing a thesis or article for publication, throughout the document you will find footnotes to references used by the student / author to external publications that supports (or contradicts) the thesis or article being written. While most of us will not be doing a degree or post graduate thesis we can use the same principles by finding other websites that have related supporting information, or content that complements your own. Put in links to these websites so that your visitors see them and can if they wish follow the link to discover more (or different) information on the topic you have written about. This type of link will be seen as improving your position in search engines and will help get your site treated as an authority site. You can, out of courtesy send an e-mail to the author / webmaster of the linked site letting them know you have linked to them and the location of the link. If this person visits your site and finds it interesting they may link back to your site. I would suggest you never ask for a reciprocal link in this context, if you get one back that is great, it is more important that you link out to sites that complement your own. An authority site does not have to be on an academic or scientific topic, it can be on anything you are interested in – cooking, gardening, stamp collecting, and taking pictures for example.

Submitting a New Website to Search Engines

Most search engines provide an online form for you to complete when you have a new website you would like listed. We have listed just a few of these for you to get started. Before you submit your site it is advisable for your website to be complete or at least well established. Do not submit your website when you have only a few words and little or no content on it. Wait and be patient, spend time getting your website set up and have real, useful unique content on it before you submit to search engines and to directories, otherwise your site may be flagged as not suitable for listing and then it can be difficult to get the search engine to reverse this decision.

Additional Resources

Download and read Google’s SEO Guide – Adobe PDF document http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Add your website to Google Search Engine http://www.google.com/addurl/

Yahoo submit page http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

DMOZ Directory http://www.dmoz.org/add.html (don’t hold your breath!) MSN Live –

Bing submit page http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

General Online Resources WebmasterWorld for online forum and sharing of information http://www.webmasterworld.com/