SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is often misunderstood and can be complicated to the novice. It involves considerably more work than just writing a few keywords on your website and repeating them as was the fashion a few years ago. In fact that will be detrimental to your placement on Google. In this article I am going to explain what I have leant whilst setting up this site and taking an expensive 1-1 course on SEO.
SEO Basic Guide
As mentioned I took an expensive 1-1 course on SEO as it is so fundamental to the success of this site and being found in organic search. I invested in the course as there are so many so called “experts” out there and I simply didn’t know who to trust. I took the course with a friend of a friend who works for an agency and advises large companies on SEO.
As is often the way, soon after you have invested a considerable sum, you find an alternative, far less expensive option. In this instance it is SEO Buddy, a very comprehensive digital download of multiple products including an astonishingly detailed checklist with an abundance of notes explaining exactly what to do. If you are serious about SEO (and you should be) then invest in this right now and get a nice discount by using our unique link. It is the best money you will ever spend. You can see a short demo film on YouTube. For a general overview od SEO that just touches the surface then read on.
What Google Wants
Google exists to provide answers to searches and wants to deliver the best possible results. Therefore what you write is hugely important. Googles robots will crawl your site and index it to determine what information it contains and what questions it answers. One way you can help Google determine what is on your site is the use of the H1, H2 and H3 headers. You can see an example of that above this paragraph “What Google Wants” which I have formatted to be a H2 header. Google wants to know you are an expert in your field so write high quality and unique content. Google determines the bounce rate on your site, that is how long someone stays on it once clicked. If a short time it tells Google that the reader so not getting the information they wanted.
Loading Speed
It is vital that your page loads quickly. Ensure that image file sizes in particular are kept small. There are numerous tools that can do this for you such as tinypng.com
Links
If your site is getting lots of backlinks, that is other sites linking to your article, then this is highly beneficial. BUT, Google is looking for quality backlinks. If you appear on link farms it will actually work against you. Some major sites will tag your link “noindex” which essentially tells the robots to ignore it. But don’t let this prevent you from getting backlinks as they will still direct people to your site. If you have lots of high quality sites linking to you then this tells Google that your site can be trusted and is high quality. It is also important to have internal links on your site, that is to other pages on your site as it allows Google to learn the site structure.
Meta description
The Meta description tells viewers in the SERP (search engine results page) what you post or page is about as well as the robots. Take time thinking about this, although it is not guaranteed that it will be published.
Keywords
This article is about SEO, but how many times have you read that term on this post? Just a handful, as too many (or keyword stuffing as it is known) is against good practice. It also makes for a poorer reading experience. It is vital before you write an article to research the Keywords associated with your topic. One great way to do this is http://ubersuggest.org – go and give it a go.
Robot.txt and Sitemap
These are documents that you create (and maybe created automatically by wordpress etc) that are submitted to Google. To check simply type in your URL and then /robots.txt and see if anything is there.
ALT text
This refers to your images and telling Google what the image is about.
Google My Business
This is a free service from Google where you can input your website and business details. This information is presented on the right hand side of searches and includes your Google reviews.
Conclusion
Getting Search Engine Optimisation correct is a vital component of any marketing strategy. It is often overlooked or just basic principles put in place. This is primarily due to a lack of understanding or fear of the financial commitment required to engage the services of an agency. The good news is that it can easily be done in house if you are willing to spend some time on it. Done correctly the return can far outweigh the financial costs of alternative marketing methods.
I highly recommend SEO Buddy, which will walk you through each step in a easy to follow format that also goes into the relevant details. It is only £69 but with our link you get a 25% discount. I really cannot think of a better resource for the money.