I am often asked about the secrets of search engine optimisation: “How can I get my website ranked higher in the search engines?”; “Why doesn’t my website appear in Google?”, etc. So, I figured it was probably about time to lay out the basics in language that anyone can understand.
I conduct workshops and seminars about SEO on a regular basis for Connecting Somerset, a partnership between Somerset County Council and local technology experts. If you are local, it’s worth checking out the Connecting Somerset website at www.connectingsomerset.co.uk for dates of events. Most are free or very low cost.
To understand the basic principles of SEO, we first need to understand the search engines and the search market in general. Make no mistake, this is BIG business. At time of writing, Microsoft is trying to take over Yahoo in a $44billion deal. Why? Because in true Microsoft global domination style, they want to try and catch up with Google, who, at time of writing, enjoy a 55% market share. With such a huge amount of money floating around, these search engines all work very hard to maintain their principle asset, which is of course their search index. Think about the search engines you use, and why you use them. You probably have a favourite. Judging by the statistics, it’s probably Google. I personally use Google because it delivers relevant results for the vast majority of terms I search for.
Let’s not be fooled into imagining the search engines have devout loyal supporters who would never consider using a competing engine. If Google stopped delivering relevant results, I would switch loyalties to a search engine that did in an instant, and without even the slightest remorse. The majority of search engine users would be just as quick to switch loyalties too.
So here is our first key point to learn. Google does not like SEO. They do not want you or I dictating how their results should be indexed – they want to do that themselves. They have an increasingly complex algorithm that maintains their index and rankings, and actively stops websites from gaining an un-natural advantage. This is why no SEO company or piece of software can guarantee you top positions in any search engine. That doesn’t stop many unscrupulous companies making that claim – my advice: read the small print. The only company that can guarantee you top position in Google is… Google – and they don’t offer that service. You cannot pay for positions within the main search engine index, and were you able to, Google’s index would be immediately compromised, become less relevant and ultimately lose market share. Google instead offers their AdWords pay-per-click advertising for commercial use, which is another topic for another day.
Understanding how valuable the index is to the search engine company is key. Any attempts to manipulate this index that overstep the mark will result in problems. There are people and search engine optimisation companies who claim to have a “killer trick” to get ranking in the search engines, or perhaps they have some amazing piece of software which will magically gain ranking for you. Any such activity will incur the wrath of the mighty search engine index maintainers, that you can guarantee. And let’s think about this… do you imagine that Google and co don’t have a team of people dedicated to scouring the many internet SEO forums to find all these so-called tips and tricks? Of course they do. If you can find out about some amazing technique, so can they, and if they take a dislike to it, you can bet your life that the next algorithm update will include code to counter-act your “magic bullet”, and as a result your website could be down-ranked or even removed from the index.
Herein lies another important point. If you hire a search engine optimisation company to look after your website, you should check that they use ethical methods. Imagine the cost to your business if all your search engine traffic disappeared overnight.
With that groundwork laid, we can talk about the things you can do, and you would be forgiven for asking “is there anything I can do?”. The answer is really simple, and when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. You need content on your website. Sounds obvious, but you would be surprised at how many businesses slap up a basic 5 page website and expect to sit pretty at the top of Google. The search engines are indexing content – if you don’t have any, what exactly are you expecting them to index?
It’s not just a case of writing reams of text either. The content needs to be well-written, relevant and compelling. Further, it needs to be set out correctly in the source code, with headings and sub-headings in appropriate HTML heading tags. Optimising source code is a huge topic, and not one to cover in an article for beginners. If you don’t know how to do this, you will need to hit the books, or hire the services of a search engine professional.
Bear in mind also when writing your content, that the search engine will look for the subject matter of the content in the title and headings of the page. If your main keywords or key phrases do not appear within the title and headings, your page will not be indexed effectively. The search engines will also look for keywords appearing within the general page content too. They don’t necessarily index every word. The search engines use an algorithm to determine the important keywords within a page, and herein we approach a key SEO term: “keyword density”.
Keyword density is a percentage score – i.e. what percentage of the words on a page are the given keyword(s). There is much debate over the ideal percentage, and many software tools dedicated to reporting on it. The truth is, that writing content to keyword density can be a time-consuming task that is ultimately a waste of time…
Write your content for your visitors, not for the search engine.
If you follow this rule, and your content reads well, is compelling, and effectively sells whatever it is you are trying to sell, then you’ll be fine. The keyword density will be fine. And, the search engines will index it properly. It may seem like a crazy thing to some SEO professionals, but you’ll just have to trust me on this one. Follow the rule above, and your content will be fine. How do I know? Well, experience for one, and of course this is exactly what Google themselves tell webmasters to do.
If you think about it, this advice makes perfect sense. Whilst you want your site to be listed in the search engines, its ultimate goal is to sell your services and products. So many websites completely fail on this front. Again, think about your own habits as a user: you type in your search terms, you choose a website from the results, and when you get to it you find that all the content has been stuffed with keywords, written for a search engine, and it makes no sense to you. Do you stick around? Or, do you go straight back to the search results and choose something else?
What is the point in getting loads of visitors to your website, if they all leave within 5 seconds?
In fact, it is better to have fewer visitors, if those visitors are going to stick around and ultimately turn into customers. Some SEO professionals believe that Google is capable of tracking how long users stay on indexed websites, and that it factors its rankings accordingly. All in all, you will be much better off if you focus on providing quality content for your visitors.
Another key factor in determining your rank in the search engines, is the popularity of your website. How do search engines measure popularity? With links. If other websites link to yours, then the search engines factor this in. Loosely, the more links, the better. However, there are several types of links and not all give the same benefit. Google also factors in the popularity of the website linking to yours. For example, a link from bbc.co.uk will give far more benefit than some small unheard of website.
Reciprocal links: this is an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” arrangement. You link to the other party on your website, and they link to you on theirs. Many so-called professional link building companies focus solely on these type of links, but remember: Google isn’t stupid. The search engines can track reciprocal links, and the popularity is adjusted accordingly.
Paid links: these are links that you pay for. A website may claim to be hugely popular, and thus you may believe it is worth paying for a link with such a website in the hope that their popularity will benefit your ranking. This used to be the case, but not so any more – certainly not with Google anyway. Google will not pass on popularity for paid links, so you should only buy a link if you feel that doing so will directly bring in business for you.
Inbound links: these are the type you really want. Other websites that just link to you with no incentive for doing so, other than the value of your content. These are the links that Google wants to see.
So, it all comes back to writing good content. If you do, the links will come.
Finally, I’d like to make a quick mention of Google PageRank, as this is something which a lot of search engine optimisation companies focus on. PageRank is a score that Google assigns each website (and even each page on each website) between 1 and 10, with 10 being the best. Gaining a high PageRank takes much time and many inbound links, and generally speaking a website with a higher PageRank will rank better, but this is not always the case – a more relevant site in terms of content will usually rank better, regardless of PageRank. You can find out your website’s score by installing the Google Toolbar, but be warned that Google update the score that you see here infrequently. Focusing solely on PageRank will not automatically bring great search engine rankings.
Really there are four elements to SEO:
- Properly written, standards compliant, optimised source code.
- Well written, relevant, keyword rich content.
- Inbound links.
- Analytics.
I’ve touched on points 2 and 3 in this article. As stated above, dealing with point 1 is a huge topic. Generally, if you are writing XHMTL/CSS code to W3C standards, you’ll be fine. Item 4 I will cover in another article. This is a really important aspect to SEO, and one that most SEO companies completely ignore. After all, search engine optimisation may bring you more traffic, but you need to know how much traffic and what percentage of that traffic converts into customers or enquiries. Such information is relatively easy to collate, but perhaps a little harder to translate into meaningful marketing data. Nevertheless, I shall have a go at explaining the basics in my next SEO article.
About the author:
David Hurst is a commercial web developer and search engine optimisation expert with over 11 years’ experience. He has worked for many household names, and is currently a director of Higher Sites Limited.
Copyright etc.:
This article is copyright 2008 David Hurst. If you wish to reproduce this article in full or in part, you must have permission, and you must credit the author with a link to this site. Respect my work please. The opinions expressed above are my own.
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