Search Engine Optimisation – Methods Compared
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Search Engine Optimisation is an ever changing discipline. It works to maximise a website’s ratings on the ‘natural’ search lists on major Search Engines. Natural or ‘organic’ lists form the main body of a SE page. These do not include the paid listings. The PPC (paid) entries tend to feature at the top and right side of the page. Whilst the other free ads have been listed by the SE’s. The order of each site is determined by its ‘importance’ and relevance to the keyword.
Plainly our aim is to get our site up with the top ones. We’re unlikely to get noticed if we’re number 8 on the tenth page! Only those in the Search Engine’s ‘inner circle’ know all the factors used to position sites. It’s not in the SE’s interest to tell people everything they do.
But there is now a skilled sector entirely devoted to benefiting from high rankings. On the Search Engine side you have upgraded technological patents being regularly filed. (To cause as much uncertainty as possible!) And to rival that, we have a large Search Engine Optimisation sector. Optimisation specialists test, quantify and evaluate a myriad of indicators that affect a site’s ratings.
SEO looks at two different aspects – one is Off Page and the other is On Page. Additionally, demographics have an influence, but SEO doesn’t cover off-web factors. To understand factors relating to off-page, please see our additional editorial.
‘On-Page’ SEO
If we can make changes to our site to make it more friendly to Search Engines, this is called ‘on-page’ optimisation. This is quite straight-forward – it simply requires correctly setting up your site. It involves such factors as – Using internal links, keywords, header tags and meta tags.
That might sound like gobbledy-gook, but don’t be alarmed! Actually, though on page work is straightforward it probably accounts for little. Indeed, it could be said to basically not have much influence at all. Many years ago, you used to be able to dupe the SE’s with lots of on-page factors. However, those days are long gone.
If, however, off-page has been optimised, (and there are many inbound back-links), then on-page continues to be important. At that stage, Internal Linking and some On Page manipulation can be beneficial.
Things To Consider… Stay away from Keywords that yield six figure results in the beginning. For example, on Google’s Search Engine you’ll see 70 million listings in the UK for the term Car Insurance. It’s not rocket science to realise that competing in this area wouldn’t be productive.
Nevertheless – Extend the phrase to Southampton car insurance and it’s under a third of a million. (Presuming that was my market). So a much more realistic target.
I could expect to get ranked far more easily for the longer phrase. In reality, getting ranked for car insurance would cost a fortune! I’d actually be head to head with the really big boys. So not a great idea – especially, in fact, when there are much better ways to go about it.
A precise description is much more valuable to us. We call them Long-tail phrases, as they’re made up of a few particularly chosen keywords. Depending on how competitive your market is, the phrases could be from 2 to 7 words long. Typically they will be 3 or 4 words long.
We like to start Search Engine Optimisation using terms that yield less than 500K. However, if the websites at the top of the listings aren’t well optimised, we may stretch to a higher count. In time our back links will grow. Then we’ll get a better rating on some of the bigger yielding phrases. With some effort, it will be possible to have a stab at the big ones within a year. This is a nicely targeted approach. We’re after the people who are really looking to buy, so we go for phrases that convert well.
Don’t just limit building back links to your website’s home page – link them up to various sub pages as well. The Search Engines like this – especially Google. Category pages for instance are good to back-link. They very frequently link up to a range of sub-pages, so driving appropriate terms to them can be very worthwhile. Thus – don’t restrict the back links to just one page. The managing and listing of individual sub-pages is receiving growing attention from the major Search Engines.
