SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is simply the name used for activity designed to improve a website search engine rankings and when I say search engines I mean Google!
Google is by far and away the King of Search Engines and as such nearly everybody works towards what they think Google wants. Google uses algorithms to score every website and every search to try to figure out which websites rank best. It will display links to the pages it considers to be the most relevant and authoritative. Simple! In fact the strangest thing about Google’s Algorithms seem to be the names, Hummingbird, Pigeon, Panda, Fred to name a few and of course the secrecy around how they work.
Over the years we’ve heard about Meta Tags, Backlinks, Alt links, White Hat, Black Hat, Link Farming …. the list goes on but what is Google really judging your site on?
Google is looking for 2 simple things!
Content or Relevancy
This basically comes down to having high quality content on your site. Make sure your content is relevant to your offering. Use your keywords but don’t over use them. What makes your site different, why are you better, why are you more interesting than other sites. What makes you unique? Information and creativity is key. Ensure your content is well written and grammatically correct. Don’t forget, content includes images and videos.
Links or Authority
Google prefers sites which are deemed as authoritative in their field and judge this by the links coming back to your site. Work towards getting other trusted websites to link to you. Get your partners, your clients, your resellers to all backlink to. If possible get newspaper articles and industry specific links. DO NOT PAY SOMEONE to get links for you …. they are going to be rubbish links and Google knows and penalises you for it! The more high quality links you have back into your site shows Google just how good you are. Create a fan base! Social Media really plays a part in this! Google indexes social media as well as your site. GET PEOPLE TALKING about you. Create some chatter and noise about just how good you are!
It’s that simple!
Well it’s not quite that simple, of course more goes into it than that. You need make sure you site is set up correctly too. You still need to consider your site structure, meta tags (content type, title, description and viewport are the main ones to worry about these days), redirects, accessibility and of course the days making sure your site is ‘mobile friendly’
Do be warned though, that even once you’ve done this Google will still take a time to find you. SEO is not an overnight fix, it takes time and dedication to your website but it is worth it in the long term!
If you don’t have the time or the resource to dedicate to SEO it may well be worth considering the use of one of the millions of ‘SEO Specialist’ out there but don’t let them blind you with so-called SEO Science, the crux of SEO is ensuring your content is good and reputable sites link back to you