Climb the SEO ladder

It's time to learn the starting steps for SEO techniques. Vesna Siljanovska gets straightforward advice from the online experts

Online media is like the video that “killed the radio star.” In the last decade we have seen the world transform into a digital era – we pay bills, buy tickets, search for train times, and book the summer holiday (the list is endless) all online. Its direct effect is that we interact with fewer people, we want things faster, we read less and we don’t even need to leave the home to do our weekly shop!

With such an enormous source of information available at our fingertips, it is essential that businesses use the power of the web to its full potential. But how can this be done? Simple: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

What is SEO?
First of all, let’s start with the basics. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and “is about improving your website’s rank and performance within search engines,” as Jonathan Saipe, SEO Trainer and Consultant for Emarketeers, explains. The most popular examples of search engines are Yahoo or Google.

And why is this ‘optimisation’ important? “Good SEO practice will result in a website ranking higher in natural searches and is a very important part of a digital marketing strategy,” says Ryan Sanderson, Senior Online Executive at Venture Marketing Group.

Essentially SEO is about creating a website that does well in a search engine – for example if you own a sandwich franchise, when someone searches for a ‘food franchise’, you want your franchise to be as high up on the search engine list as possible.

One of the ways you can achieve this is ensuring one of your key phrases (‘keywords’) on your website is ‘food franchise’, because that is how a search engine establishes whether your site is relevant or not to the search being made.

Where to start?
Experts agree that SEO is a big area and can seem quite daunting when you first begin. However, there are three things that you can do immediately. The first is to speak to the company that designed your site and find out what they are doing to increase your site’s optimisation. The second is to identify your target customer and visitor.

“Once you know who they are you need to work out what they are looking for and which words, terms or phrases are they entering when searching for you, your products and your competitors,” summarises Chartered Marketer Christopher Cook, Marketing Specialist at Coconut Creatives.

Thirdly, update your website with fresh, new and unique content, as “search engines such as Google want to deliver the best websites to their client base,” says Ryan. Therefore if it is an active, regularly updated site, Google is more likely to help you take a few more steps up the ladder.

Jonathan suggests booking yourself onto a one-day course as this also allows you to familiarise yourself with the fundamentals of SEO and also get to grips with the myriad of ‘jargon’.

He also recommends a visit to websites such as WebmasterWorld
(www.webmasterworld.com) and Search Engine Watch (www.searchenginewatch.com) for those wishing to learn more about SEO.

Building your site
If you outsource your web design or development, Jonathan advises that you should be competent with SEO. In particular, if you are at the pitching stage he suggests that you “request in your brief that some tangible experience of building SEO-friendly websites is evident in agency proposals. The word tangible is key here as many agencies will say they build SEO-friendly websites but won’t necessarily know what it means in practice!”
Ryan adds that, if you have a technical background, ensure that your website’s architecture adheres to the W3C principle – you can check your site on www.validator.w3.org.

It is essential that you work closely with your agency and trust that it is developing your site to maximise its SEO potential. If you are building and maintaining your own site, Ryan and Jonathan both advocate registering for a course where an independent source can evaluate your site and keep you in touch with SEO trends.

If you are at the stage where your site has already been built, your focus now will be adding the content. As Christopher explains, you need to ensure it is “relevant with the key terms identified earlier, which need to be mentioned throughout the site. Images, videos and flash banners are now also all relevant so ensure the tags, titles and descriptions you use are laden with the keywords.”

Maintaining your site
Ryan advises you create an SEO strategy that is “designed, implemented and executed on a sustained basis.” This ideally needs to be done with an agency that specialises in SEO. It will help you have a focus with your website and also enable you to assess your return on investment.
It is important to understand that SEO is a long-term strategy and patience is required, say both Jonathan and Christopher. However, Jonathan adds: “If I was asked to choose two key items I would opt for the following; Adding high quality content on a regular basis; this could take the form of a blog, customer reviews, case studies, news items, etc. Also link building; attracting back-links from websites that are not only relevant to your sector, but have a reasonable degree of authority and a good search rank.”

Before you embark upon the world of SEO, always remember the most important objective is to create a site that is developed for your target audience. Although using keywords is essential, this should never be prioritised above content that is interesting, easy to read online and informative.

Ultimately “the precise intricacies of SEO are unknown as it is not in the major search engine’s best interests to divulge this information, making much of SEO hearsay or trial and error,” explains Ryan. Therefore, the emphasis should be on getting the basics right and you can make a critical difference to your business!

For further information:
Google Software Engineer,
Matt Cutts runs a topical and relevant blog on
www.mattcutts.com/blog
WebmasterWorld
www.webmasterworld.com
Search Engine Watch
www.searchenginewatch.com
W3C principle
http://validator.w3.org

With thanks to:
Christopher Cook, Chartered Marketer, Coconut Creatives
www.coconutcreatives.co.uk
Jonathan Saipe, SEO Trainer and Consultant for Emarketeers
www.emarketeers.com
Ryan Sanderson, Senior
Online Executive, Venture Marketing Group
www.franchiseinfo.co.uk