Stupidly Simple SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a process. That means that there are lots of small details that you need to pay attention to. Some of those details may seem small or insignificant or even petty. But you need to remember that you're dealing with computers and they can be exceptionally fussy when it comes to this kind of thing. Follow these stupidly simple SEO principles and you'll be ahead of most of your competition, whether you're using pay per click or old-fashioned organic SEO.
Get your house in order
By this I mean checking over your website.
Every single page needs to be checked - not just the main "index" page. Over time, Google will crawl over your site and will decide the best page to present for any given individual search. Which means that 9 times out of 10 it will return a page in the search results that isn't your index page.
The basics of your website design need to be correct.
It needs to look good in a web browser so that potential customers trust you.
But it also needs to look good to Google's computer.
Your website designer should have ensured that your pages have nice-looking titles. It's your job to double check that they have delivered on this promise, otherwise people are unlikely to even click on your site if it shows up in their search results. Check each page title and ask yourself whether or not a potential customer would be likely to click on it in a search result. If you think they would, it's more than likely good enough.
But if all it says is a one or two word description followed by your company name, chances are they'll ignore it. Always assuming it appeared in a searched-for result in the first place.
Then check the meta description. This is your call to action in the search results. If it's stuffed with keywords and looks like a bunch of text designed to spoof a search engine, replace it fast. If it reads reasonably well then it's probably OK.
Go through the same process for the headline on the page itself and any text on the page.
Get some backlinks
Backlinks are links pointing to your site from other - ideally relevant - sites.
You don't need lots of these and nowadays quality definitely beats quantity. A handful of cherry picked backlinks normally helps more than thousands of essentially spammy links.
Check out directories related to your town and industry. Then do your best to get them to link back to your website. Most will have forms that you can use for this although occasionally they may prefer you to send an email. The better directories will actually inspect your site before deciding whether or not to add a link. Google will instinctively know this (well, actually, it is programmed to figure this out) and will weight this kind of link higher than one that's just automatically added.
Once you've started the process of getting those links, it's time to go a bit wider. If there's a forum that covers your industry, that's a good place to contribute to. Spend a few minutes each day reading and replying.
If your site is business to business, ask your customers for a link back to your site.
These stupidly simple SEO ideas will put you head and shoulders above most of your competition and will help with your internet marketing.
Get your house in order
By this I mean checking over your website.
Every single page needs to be checked - not just the main "index" page. Over time, Google will crawl over your site and will decide the best page to present for any given individual search. Which means that 9 times out of 10 it will return a page in the search results that isn't your index page.
The basics of your website design need to be correct.
It needs to look good in a web browser so that potential customers trust you.
But it also needs to look good to Google's computer.
Your website designer should have ensured that your pages have nice-looking titles. It's your job to double check that they have delivered on this promise, otherwise people are unlikely to even click on your site if it shows up in their search results. Check each page title and ask yourself whether or not a potential customer would be likely to click on it in a search result. If you think they would, it's more than likely good enough.
But if all it says is a one or two word description followed by your company name, chances are they'll ignore it. Always assuming it appeared in a searched-for result in the first place.
Then check the meta description. This is your call to action in the search results. If it's stuffed with keywords and looks like a bunch of text designed to spoof a search engine, replace it fast. If it reads reasonably well then it's probably OK.
Go through the same process for the headline on the page itself and any text on the page.
Get some backlinks
Backlinks are links pointing to your site from other - ideally relevant - sites.
You don't need lots of these and nowadays quality definitely beats quantity. A handful of cherry picked backlinks normally helps more than thousands of essentially spammy links.
Check out directories related to your town and industry. Then do your best to get them to link back to your website. Most will have forms that you can use for this although occasionally they may prefer you to send an email. The better directories will actually inspect your site before deciding whether or not to add a link. Google will instinctively know this (well, actually, it is programmed to figure this out) and will weight this kind of link higher than one that's just automatically added.
Once you've started the process of getting those links, it's time to go a bit wider. If there's a forum that covers your industry, that's a good place to contribute to. Spend a few minutes each day reading and replying.
If your site is business to business, ask your customers for a link back to your site.
These stupidly simple SEO ideas will put you head and shoulders above most of your competition and will help with your internet marketing.
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