Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation is something that everyone who has a website on line should grasp the basics of, in order to maximise your potential for success on the World Wide Web. There are thousands of articles online discussing the merits of different approaches to search engine optimisation. Here, we will just deal with the foundations of the topic- the things that every website owner should know about.

What is Search Engine optimisation?

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the process by which website owners can attempt to make their website pages more attractive to the search engines so that they are returned in the relevant results pages when someone searches for a word or phrase related to their website.

Why does it matter?

When you search for a word or phrase on a search engine (examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo and AOL) the results pages that appear in response to your search are often numerous- sometimes there will be thousands or millions of results. Nobody has the time or patience to check every link to every web page that appears. You wouldn’t work your way through tens of thousands of results and neither will your customers. In fact the majority of people searching for something on the internet will only use the first, and sometimes the second, pages of results. Therefore, websites want to be listed on the first or second results pages to ensure that there is a good chance of people clicking on their website.

How can we achieve a listing on the first or second results page?

Nobody can answer this question definitively. The largest, most frequently used search engine is Google and the inner-workings of Google are not disclosed to the general public! Google is a company populated with the smartest brains working on the internet today- they are responsible for fine-tuning the search engine so that it is constantly evolving. Their aim is to deliver the internet searcher the most RELEVANT results in all of their searches. So, we might not know exactly how a website is evaluated by Google, but we do know that they require relevance, and this is the key to achieving better search engine rankings.

Relevance is also the key to the success of your website. If your website sells Christmas cards, you don’t want people to click on it if they are looking for birthday cards, their click wouldn’t count for your company, they would simply look at your site, see that it isn’t what they’re looking for and click off it again.

So we’ve established that you only want people to find your site in their searches is it is what they’re looking for, and we’ve also established that Google only want to list your site in search engine results pages if it is what the user is searching for. Therefore you can achieve a listing on the first results page if it is relevant to the end user.

Is it really that simple?

Well, the theory is that simple but how you go about getting Google or another search engine to recognise your content as relevant to a person’s search is down to the programming behind the website. Yedit Xpress has been developed to maximise the opportunities for search engines to find and display your relevant pages to a person’s search. So, all that you have to do is sign up for a Yedit website, follow our in-built tips when creating pages and your key words and phrases will be optimised in searches.

What do I have to do?

Your most important task when creating your website is to ensure that it is full of relevant copy that Yedit Xpress will optimise for search engines. Not only should each page of your website be built around a key word of phrase, it should also read well and provide information that users will be looking for. The best websites are full of well-written, meaningful text that includes key words- this is your main aim.

What are keywords?

Key words and phrases are what people will type into a search engine when they are looking for something on the internet. You have to think about what people will be searching for when they are looking for your website. For example, if you own a B&B in Torquay think about what people would search for: B&B Torquay; holiday Torquay; short break in Torquay and then try to compose your website copy so that it includes these phrases and words.

A good tip for checking whether people are actually searching for these words is to use a key word search tool like https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal In this tool you type the phrase that you think people would search for (e.g. B&B Torquay) and it will show you how many people have searched for this phrase, and also related phrases which might be more popular. Once you have a list of key words or phrases for each page of your website you should then go about creating the copy.

Try to ensure that the key word or phrase for each page of the website is repeated throughout the page’s copy BUT remember that it has to read well. Nobody wants to read a badly written page that simply repeats a phrase throughout it; this turns people off and makes them click elsewhere. You need to think about what you are writing and ensure that it makes sense to readers and provides them with meaningful information written in proper sentences. Search engines are clever and they will recognise if a phrase is simply repeated again and again without meaning. In these cases the search engines might categorise your web page as spam and this will adversely affect its search engine optimisation putting it to the bottom of the results list.

Once I have optimised my website how long does it take to start working for me?

Search engine optimisation is not an exact science. If you choose a Yedit Xpress website and write your copy well with key words and phrases in mind for every page, you will be putting yourself in a very good position to achieve good search engine rankings but it will not happen overnight.

I have heard web masters compare the search engine optimisation of a new website to having a baby (i.e. it takes about 9 months to start seeing meaningful results). This does sound like a long time but in the world of the web where there are millions of websites all vying to be top of the search engine lists, this is a realistic time frame and the sooner that you get started the sooner you will start to see results.