Make your website work for YOU!
You may have heard of phrases such as "Search Engine Optimisation", "SEO", "SEM" or even "Google Optimisation"; they all mean very similar things. We will discuss what YOU need to know about Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) and what you can do to gain an upper hand over your competitors (don't worry, our aim is to make your website work for you and we are not trying to make you an Internet expert).
If you have used the Internet, then you will have almost definitely used a search engine. They are websites that you use to search for information such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.
If you have a website, you want your potential customers to be able to find you easily, this means appearing high in search engines. SEO is essentially a set of methods to make websites appear higher in search engine listings.
Unfortunately, there are no guaranteed methods for making your website appear right at the top of search engines. However, you can make your website more visible and accessible to search engines, essentially the same as switching on the lights on a shop sign; making your website stand out amongst the crowd.
Why do I need to optimise my website?
You can have the best looking website in the World but if you cannot be found in search engines, you are as good as invisible. A famous search behaviour study in which users' eye movements were tracked distinctly shows most eyes look at the top left corner of the search results (see figure below), with a small coverage at the top of the paid search results. More interestingly, 40% of users do not scroll down below the red "fold line".
The good news is that not many people know how to optimise their websites properly, so the chances are that your competitors have not fully optimised their sites; giving you the chance to gain immediate competitive advantages.
Why Google this and Google that?
Put simply, people use Google more than any other search engines, by a long, long way! In a UK study in search trends, Google accounted for 77% of the searches conducted! Phrases such as "Googling" and "just Google it" have become part of everyday conversations.
We will use Google from now on but these methods apply to other search engines. However, you would be foolish to ignore the other search engines as they could still account for just under one in four of your potential website visitors.
Let's start optimising!
There are various types of optimisation including improving your website's code ... don't worry, I do not expect you to know how to do this yourself so we are just going to focus on simple things that you can do. There are also a number of other intricate methods that require either in-depth knowledge on search engine behaviour and/or more time. However, we are going to focus on the simple methods you can easily and quickly employ. We will concentrate on the following four methods:
1. Submitting your web address to Google.
2. Keywords & Key Phases.
3. Content is KEY!
4. Directory submission.
1. Submitting your web address to Google.
Google crawls through the Internet constantly looking for new websites and any website changes, it then index everything they find like a librarian so that it can return the most relevant search results efficiently. However, there are literally millions of new websites and web pages added to the Internet everyday so it can take time for Google to find you. Manually submitting your web address to Google is flagging up a sign to ask Google to look at it; not doing this could mean a long wait before Google realises that your website is on the Internet. Here's how to submit to Google:
Step 1: Go to www.google.co.uk and click on 'About Google'.
Step 2: Click on 'Submitting your Site'.
Step 3: Enter all boxes with the most relevant information (URL is
your website address) and then click 'Add URL'. Finished!
Don't forget to submit to other major search engines as well.
2. Keywords & Key Phrases.
Identifying your keywords and key phases is perhaps the most important part of optimising your website. You can then use keywords and key phrases effectively in other optimisation strategies.
What are keywords and key phrases?
They are words and phrases that are relevant to your business; words or phrases people put into Google to find you. For example, if you have a vet surgery in a town called "Atown", one of your key phases may be "Atown Vet" or "animal care in Atown".
Finding your keywords
To start off, create a list of keywords you expect your potential customers would type into Google. Be unique, if you provide health care for small animals, then focus your efforts on this area. To reap the best rewards you should also target phrases geographically. For example our friends in "Atown" might use one of the below phrases to search.
"Atown Vets"
"Dog health care Atown"
"Cat vaccinations Atown"
Now you are armed with a list of keywords, let's use them!
3. Content is KEY!
Google regards website content extremely highly; Google looks at your website content to decide how relevant you are compared to other websites for search terms.
If any of your keywords do not appear in your content, they are no use at all in the eyes of search engines; so either they are not your real keywords or you can take good care including them in your content. Here are a couple of key points:
- Make sure your keywords and key phrases are included in your page text.
- Put your most important key phrases earlier in pages.
You can put your key phrases in several times in an appropriate way but do not abuse the system by repeating your keywords many times; Google will know this and will penalise your website ranking. Be sensible with your content, your customers will need to be able to read it as well.
Think about including relevant help or information pages, tips and advice pages to help Google gain further information on the context of your website.
Google is also attracted to regularly updated websites as this shows that the sites are still alive, provide good information and have not been left abandoned. Consider publishing regular news about your practice to keep areas of your website moving.
4. Directory Submissions
Another criterion Google uses to rank your site is the number of relevant links pointing at your website, this is called inbound links. If you have many inbound links, Google will regard your website as being important to many people.
A sure way to get people linking to your website is to have good content, if other people find the information on your website useful, they will naturally link to you. You may be surprised, some of your customers have blogs and they may very well link to you.
Another way to build up the amount of inbound links is to submit your website to relevant online directories, these are the online equivalent of Yellow Pages; many of them are free and some charges a small fee. Try to submit to directories that are relevant to your business such as business directories for your town, borough and county, and veterinary related directories. After this, start submitting to some of the top directories; the following five are all free and relatively well known:
1. www.dmoz.org
2. www.worldsiteindex.com
3. www.domaining.in
4. www.webworldindex.com
5. www.searchsight.com
Want to do more?
We covered some simple ways for making your website easier for your potential customers to find on search engines; this is a great start and there are a lot more you can do to improve it even further.
Have you thought about monitoring your website traffic, knowing how many people visit your website per month or per week? There are ways of finding out geographically who visit your website and which of your pages are most visited. Clever website owners use this type of information to deliver the most demanded information on their website which organically grows their customer base.
There are many other clever things you can do, why not give us a call for a chat and see what costs effective methods you can do?
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