The basis of search engine optimisation
The article is based on information I hand to my clientele when undertaking the optimisation of their web sites, or the e-marketing of their business. It explains much of the back-end processes of SEO. The methods detailed are not quick-fast ways of achieving a high ranking web site; these are ways of achieving a truly relevant web site, that SEs desire in their search results. This is not an SEO tutorial; that is an involved process beyond the scope of such an article.
Search engine optimisation is a method of e-marketing, one of several effective methods of drawing business through the internet. Its suitability depends on the field and scale of your business, and will not be suitable for all enterprises. An independent e-marketing consultant will be able to offer advice.
Introduction to SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), also known as Search Engine Placement, is the process of engineering web pages to appear towards the top of search engine result pages (SERPs). The big four search engines (SEs), Google Yahoo AOL and MSN, do not accept paid inclusion in their main search results, hence SEO is a task undertaken by independent engineers.
Search for your businesses service on the internet, and your web site is likely to appear somewhere below page 50, if at all. Each web page containing the submitted search term is listed in order of relevance. The more relevant the page is with regards to the search term, the higher it is listed. Create a very relevant page and it will rank highly.
SEO engineers study and monitor the SEs algorithm used to rank pages. Of course the Search Engines themselves do not disclose much information on their algorithms, hence SEO is a risky field. SEO was once a case of including your sites keywords in the META tags, but SEs have since substantially improved their ranking methods making SEO a labour intensive process.
Creating a copy filled web site
The fundamental requirement of the SE algorithm is text. Search engines utilise spiders to visit web pages, follow any links they find, and index the text into a database where it can be swiftly accessed. When the customer queries Google for a search term, Google accesses the index and lists the web pages it finds relevant to the query. Hence the fundamental requirement of an efficient web site should be ample text.
Web sites containing sales orientated text are aimed at selling a service to the customer, but will only be partially effective at drawing web traffic. Increasing the text content by providing articles, tutorials, and resources increases the potential of drawing visitors to your web site.
The theory is that of numbers. Consider this very article and its potential at drawing customers looking for e-marketing or SEO. All the following search terms appear in the article and have the potential of being indexed by search engines: e-marketing, optimisation, meta tags, rank highly, SEO engineers, paid inclusion, top of search engine results etc. Immediately the web site will be listed under substantially more search terms than if it solely contained a few pages explaining that the company provides e-marketing services. The resulting effect is that the site is listed under substantially more search terms.
Articles, tutorials, and resources are an elementary part of the internet: the sharing of information. The information you provide will be used by others, and other sites will begin to provide their readers with links to your pages. The site will then acquire some of the traffic-drawing potential of the linked web site as well as its own. Google and the other SEs will observe the popularity of your site and increase its SERPs ranking accordingly (more on this later).
SEO engineers will undertake the task of optimising your web site to appear under search terms relevant to your business. The process is explained later, but it is worth noting that it requires a sizeable quantity of text on at least several pages within the site. At time of printing approximately 550 words is optimal.
Providing resources to increase popularity
Google has led the way in measuring web sites popularity as a method of ranking search results. The popularity of a page is measured on a PR range of 1 to 10 with logarithmic base. You will frequently hear your SEO consultant referring to PR ratings. A good copy filled page will quickly achieve PR3 and an established web site will achieve PR5 on its home page. PR6 and PR7 are what SEO engineers seek to achieve. PR8 and above is generally only achieved by long established and popular businesses such as eBay and the BBC. Only a dozen or so sites have achieved PR10.
Creating a popular web site will increase the PR rating, which counts substantially towards its SERPs ranking, as well as drawing web traffic through its prominence. This explains why Yahoo offers free email. Offer email and users will continue to return to the site and use it services. Other web sites began to link to Yahoo because of its value, hence drawing more traffic. The effect is two-fold.
Google is the best example. Having out performed the competition through its superior service, Google then increased its popularity by providing extra resources, such as an image search facility, consumer product search facility, and most recently email with 1GB of disk space!
Your SEO consultant will be able to offer advice on the resources at his disposal, as many will require web applications (such as forums, submission directories, and chat rooms). However you know your business best and the decision on which resources to provide must be a joint judgment. It is not unprincipled to look at the resources provided by the competition and endeavour to provide an enhanced service.
Find relevant business providers
Many industry fields will contain services which seek to find trade for your business. Examples are bidding services where customers submit their requirements, and businesses offer tenders for their service. Such business providers should have invested in their own marketing to make their service effective. Most services will operate on a commission basis.
Take time to browse for such services, and consider the ones used by your competitors (your SEO consultant will be able to track these down).
Link popularity
Link popularity refers to the number of web sites that have linked to your own, and is used as part of the SE ranking algorithm. Artificially increasing your link popularity by setting up dummy web sites, cross linking, reciprocal linking, and submitting to free-for-all directories was, until recently, the primary method of increasing SERPs ranking. Google has led the way in eliminating web sites using unprincipled methods. Engineers suspect that sites have been penalised for excessive use of reciprocal linking.
Link popularity shall foreseeably continue to be a primary method of increasing SERPs ranking, and we have previously detailed methods of encouraging other sites to link to yours. The process can be encouraged through the use of high quality relevant directories. The emphasis is on relevant directories, as links from unrelated pages are unsafe. Reciprocal links and link pages are fruitless and only high-class links from PR4+ pages should be sought.
Locating, selecting, and submitting to such directories is a labour intensive process, and should be carried out with heed. Automated submission services are a low-priced method, but are only partially effective as reputable directories will disallow such submissions. And of course relevant directories must be manually selected to avoid penalisation by search engines.
A good starting point is to track down the directories which have been used by your successful competitors.
Keyword optimisation
Keyword optimisation is the process of seeking the most sought after search terms, and ensuring that your web site is listed in search engines under those terms.
A business offering bicycle rental will seek to find whether most search engine users look for "bike rental", "bicycle rental", "bike hire", or "mountain bikes" in order that the site can be optimised for the most popular search terms. Regrettably search engines are not eager to release such statistics; hence they are normally obtained through the use of spy ware. The data is held by private enterprises and must be paid for. Most SEO engineers have pre-paid access to such indexes, and you may find it cheaper to obtain the information through your consultant.
The process of selecting the correct search terms involves eliminating regional keywords, and overly generic terms. The business owner and SEO engineer should make a joint decision on the final list. Prior to optimisation the engineer will normally make an assessment of the competition on each search term as success rates will vary greatly between terms.
The placement of keywords within the page will affect how the page is ranked for the term, and the SEO engineer will restructure the back-end coding accordingly. This often causes a conflict between the SEO engineer and the web designer; hence care should be taken in the designer-engineer relationship. Ideally the web designer who codes the site should have an appreciation of SEO, but this is often not the case.
In optimising a page, the engineer will restructure the back-end code to use CSS in the titles, and sometimes will use CSS to increase the keyword prominence. In most cases the front-end of the page will not change much, although the page text may be altered, and hyperlinks will be modified.
Prior to the Late 2003/2004 algorithm updates made by Google, keyword densities and placement had a significant impact on the SERPs ranking. Software packages were utilised to achieve the optimal structure, which varied between search engines. Doorway pages and cloaked pages were used to achieve the correct result without affecting the original page. The methods are no longer of significant value, and there is no notable reason for engineers to overly use such software.
Contradictory effects of page design and alterations
The use of dynamic menus, Flash animation, and framesets and can have contradictory effects on the ability of web sites to increase their SERPs ranking. It is essential to consider the SEs capabilities when creating a site. At times small changes such as altering the page extensions can have ruinous effects. Per se it is important that the SEO engineer is consulted when changes are made to web pages or within the site.
Search engine submission and indexing
Recently produced sites will not have been indexed by SEs and as such that is the first step to take. The major search engines have an "add URL" facility where new sites can be submitted. The SE's emphasis however is on re-indexing established sites rather than embracing new sites. The service will therefore take up to several months. Your SEO engineer will be able to have your site promptly indexed by linking it from an existing PR4+ site.
