Tony Hill

SEO may be an art, but it’s not ‘dark’

If you are a business owner or handle your company’s marketing, you are likely to have heard about and deleted numerous emails pertaining to Search Engine Optimisation. These are likely to have been from agencies informing you of how they have “visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in the major search engines and directories”; before offering you “guaranteed top positions” along with a “500% increase in traffic”.

These e-mails are often a pest to business owners but they’re also a hindrance to those in the industry. They give SEO providers a bad reputation and rather than demystify the process or demonstrate its importance, serve only to create hostility and apathy toward search engine optimisation.

In recent years SEO has been referred to as many things, including “a waste of money”, “not necessary” and most commonly, “a dark art”. These terms do not accurately describe the process. It can be argued, though, that it is an art – the basic principles are straight forward, but it takes skill and practice to achieve great results.

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of increasing traffic and enquiries through a website by enhancing your search results in search engines. It’s about making your website and individual pages more relevant; attractive and easily read by search engines to make them appear higher in search results. Search results matter; when your pages have higher rankings, more people can find you.

The use of search engines such as Google, is the second most popular online activity (behind only Facebook) and with the number of internet users in the UK over 51 million, (Internet World Stats) getting your website found is important. SEO improves the odds of someone finding your company online.

Search engines account for every word on the internet. When someone searches within Google, it narrows results to pages that are only about those words searched for. So how does SEO get your site to appear high up among those results?

The first step is to know your customers. More specifically, know your potential customers; who are they, what are they looking for and what phrases they could be typing into Google to find it. With this knowledge, you can identify what keyphrases your website will need to be optimised around. It’s important to find the right keyphrases; those that your site will not only be able to appear for in Google but will also drive visitors. For example, it is all well and good to rank for “dog grooming in Folkestone” but if nobody is searching for that phrase it’s not going to be sending any visitors or shaggy-haired dog owners your way.

Once you have selected the phrases that will drive traffic and enquiries to your website, on-page optimisation is the next stage of the SEO process, ensuring your site contains these phrases in all the right ways and places. This means that the phrases are contained in the right amounts, not too much or too little. You need to implement your phrases in the page copy, check that the titles of the pages are appropriate and that you’re making full use of images and videos. In addition, your navigation needs to be easy for both search engines and users to follow and most importantly, make sure that your site’s page code shows all this.

Once your website itself is optimised, SEO looks at who is linking to your site. Links to your website matter. More precisely, links from quality, relevant websites to yours matter. It is a recommendation and a way of pointing out to users and search engines that your site has good information related to your keyphrases. Search engines can detect how many links a site has and can tell which of these are relevant. It will give more weight to those from trustworthy and related sites. Effective SEO will ensure that your site gains links from trustworthy, relevant sites and that those links will be based around your keyphrases rather than your company name.

SEO is fundamental to a successful online marketing campaign. Accordingly, in order to really see lasting results from SEO it is important to turn to the experts; not those companies that plague your inbox with extravagant claims but one that fully understands SEO and takes the time to get to know your business and its customers.

MCM Net will be hosting a free SEO seminar in Tunbridge Wells in March. To book your place or for more information, please e-mail laj@mcmnet.co.uk