SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimisation” and is an umbrella term for activities that improve the chances of your website getting found among the millions of other websites out there.
In this article we aim to give you a basic understanding of what SEO covers along with some explanations of common terms and other jargon you’re likely to come across when working on moving your website up the search rankings.
SEO includes a myriad of techniques and processes that can help improve your website’s performance in search rankings. Some of these are quick and easy fixes while others require more thought and planning and take longer to bear fruit.
To begin with it’s important to make sure that your current website is in tip-top shape and adheres to the guidelines set out by search engines like Google.
Once that’s sorted we can plan how to add content to your website that will contribute to sustained improvement in the rankings.
When it comes to search engines, Google is the main player. Other search engines like Yahoo and Bing don't come close in terms of user numbers and searches performed.
Google performs roughly 8.5 billion searches per day and uses a complex algorithm to find and sort search results into an order that’s designed to help the user find the information that they’re looking for as quickly as possible.
While it’s true that we shouldn’t completely ignore other search engines out there including competitor websites like Bing and Yahoo, it is vital that your website performs well on Google because it has more than a 90% share of the market and that’s not likely to change any time soon.
In order to improve your websites ranking it’s important to look at how a search engine like Google ranks search results. What does Google want from a website? What will it reward with higher rankings and what does it punish?
Well, Google is a business and like any business it needs to provide value for the consumer. While it’s true that a huge portion of Google’s revenue comes from advertising (around 75% - see chart below), that revenue is almost completely reliant on Google being a really good search engine for non-paying users.
If users started losing confidence in Google’s ability to find the information that they’re looking for, then they might start using a different search engine and therefore ad revenue would begin to fall.
So Google is trying to please the users, but what do they want?
Most people turn to google when they need a search engine to find out some information on a particular topic or to search for something they want to buy.
Google’s first job is to make sure that as users we only see relevant pages listed in the results.
If Gary searches for the answer to a question like “who built the pyramids at Giza?” a web page about the life of whales and dolphins in the Pacific ocean probably isn’t going to be useful to Gary and so Google doesn’t include that page in the results.
Google must also decide on an order to display all the search results in a way that is most helpful to the user, so how does it do this?
Well, the honest answer is that no one really knows the exact factors that google uses to rank search results, however Google does provide guidelines and best practice on how to rank well.
Remember, Google wants users to keep using its search engine and that means we should think about what users want they search for something.
User’s want the following
Going back to Gary and his quest for knowledge on the pyramids, Gary probably wants to see the most trusted sources first and wants to be able to navigate easily around the website that loads quickly without worrying about getting a virus or clicking on a dangerous link.
Good SEO is mostly about making the experience of users like Gary as valuable and easy as possible.
So what can we do today to improve Gary’s experience when using our website and hopefully get a quick bounce up the search rankings?
With many of the topics listed below the idea is more about solving issues that are damaging the website’s search performance. Later we’ll talk about strategies for building long term success and pushing your website to the top of the rankings.
For now let’s get the essentials out of the way!
Keywords are words or phrases that a user might enter into a search engine. The results page will show links to pages that contain that word or phrase, or are considered related to the user's search.
Keywords are central to the meaning and content of a website page and therefore are likely to appear through the content of the page. Google uses keywords to determine what a page is about and if it’s relevant to the search performed by the user.
A user wanting to buy a lead for their dog might enter “best dog lead” while a website page selling dog leads would probably feature the word “dog” and phrases such as “dog lead” prominently, for instance in the headings, text and image tags.
Back in the day SEO often consisted of stuffing as many keywords as possible into the text of your website in an attempt to trick Google into awarding a high search ranking. But things have moved on considerably in modern SEO and that type of shenanigans is likely to get your website banned from Google altogether.
While keywords do provide context on what a page is about to google, it is only one factor when ranking. Over optimising a page with too many keywords will likely read badly to users and have a negative impact on search engine ranking.
As long as it’s clear what your page is about, you probably have enough keywords in the text and titles.
HTML is the code language used to create and display web pages on the internet. It contains all the text for a website but also all the other elements that a page includes such as images, videos, links and other metadata.
Search engines like Google not only read the text, but also all of the other code including any HTML tags to help determine what the page is about and how useful it might be to a user.
When performing on-page SEO it's important that the HTML tags are all complete and relevant to create a cohesive sense of what the page is about and what things like images and videos are showing.
The “alt” tag on an image's primary purpose is to give the image context for someone who has limited vision and may not be able to clearly see the image. Google also reads this tag and therefore it’s a great opportunity to make sure that Google knows what the image and your page is all about by including keywords in your image alt tags.
Make sure that the keywords plus a few variations are in the heading tags, img tags, the meta title and the meta description.
The world moves at a fast pace and no one wants to wait for a slow website to load. If a user does happen to come across your link, it’s important that they get to see the content as quickly as possible.
Google describes page load speed as a ranking factor but independent research has shown that fast pages don’t necessarily outrank slightly slower pages.
The main thing to remember from an SEO point of view is that really slow pages go to the bottom and if a user does find them, they probably won't wait for the page to load. This is especially true on mobile devices that often take longer to load pages than laptops or desktops due to network limitations.
SEO experts can often significantly improve page load times through caching, code optimisation and improvements to the server as well as using a CDN (Content Delivery Network).
If your website isn't secure then you're not doing SEO properly! Website's hoping to rank anywhere near the top of Google should at the very least have an SSL certificate that shows that the website is using an encrypted connection. A website with an SSL certificate will use the prefix “https://” rather than the old “http://” unencrypted connection.
User’s trying to access a website that doesn’t have an SSL certificate receive a warning page along with a red warning sign in the top corner of the page.
Google also checks websites for viruses and unsafe or malicious code. If your website contains anything Google considers to be either of these then it’s highly likely that your website will be omitted and even black listed from search results - this would be very bad for SEO.
Is your website a good experience for users? Will Gary be able to easily find the information he’s looking for or will he get lost in the tall grass because your website isn’t easy to navigate around.
The content that’s currently on your website could probably be presented better. Better quality, fast loading images, great internal link structure so that users can move around the website in an intuitive way, clear text that’s easy to read.
All these things matter to users and Google tracks how users react to your website. When users leave a website it’s called a “Bounce” and if Google notices that users are quick to bounce when visiting your webpage it indicates to Google that your website is probably not the hottest spot in town.
Good user experience (UX) is vital if you don’t want your website to suffer in the rankings so make sure it's part of your SEO plan.
In the long term there are two main elements to achieving long term search ranking nirvana...
Producing high quality content and hosting it on your website WILL bring traffic and keep users who visit your page on your site for longer. The more quality content you host, the bigger the potential pay off.
Examples of great content you can start producing today include blogs, tutorials, articles, videos and infographics. If people can share your post on social and it goes viral then you could end up with a big influx of new visitors.
Great content can distinguish you as an authority within your niche - write enough tutorials on a subject and people will actively seek out your content. If your content is good enough and you've submitted the page to Google, you may find that other websites even link to it.
It's important to remember that not everybody who could become a potential customer is actively looking to purchase right now. If your website sells sprockets then the tutorial on how to use a sprocket that you uploaded a few months ago could be the reason why Gary found your site and subsequently, your online shop.
Google takes note of stats like how long users stay on your site and how many actions they take such as clicking links. Google uses this information to determine the quality of the user experience and how authoritative your website is.
If visitors stay on your page or website for a longtime it means that they've found something useful or interesting and that their search was productive. Thats what Google wants and why high quality content is a great investment when it comes to SEO.
High quality backlinks are incredibly helpful when attempting to improve a website’s reputation with Google. Think of backlinks as other websites vouching for your website. The more prestigious the website that provides the backlink, the more impressed Google will be.
Links from articles by a major media outlet in your industry can have a massive impact on your rankings, whereas a link from your mate on his facebook profile won’t move the needle.
But how do you get these valuable backlinks? It can be really difficult when starting out but there are ways that you and your SEO specialist can grow your contact list within the industry and create relationships that may lead to valuable backlinks down the line.
Great content often leads to great backlinks. Why would anyone want to link to your website if it’s not very good? Tutorials, articles, blogs, videos etc are all excellent ways to provide value to the user and if the content is good enough you might even be lucky enough to earn some backlinks from complete strangers who come across it, love it and link to it.
But it is also possible to get some great backlinks for your site from other avenues such as industry contacts. If Kim Kardashian started a new website tomorrow she wouldn’t need to create pages and pages of content to get great backlinks.
You’re probably not Kim Kardashian but it’s likely that you have some conducts in your field that might be open to linking to you.
In short, SEO is pretty straightforward and easy to implement. If you’re not comfortable with coding or the technical side, or you just don’t have the time then hiring an SEO expert is one of the best investments you can make.
Hopefully you now understand some of the key principles of SEO and how to plan your own SEO campaign. If you’re at the beginning of your journey, get the basics sorted. If you’re ready to invest time and energy into becoming a major player in your sector then start planning your content creation and backlink strategies.
At its most fundamental level SEO isn’t about gaming the system or tricking Google into moving you up the rankings. It’s about making your website good. And you should be interested in that because in the digital age, your website is your shop window.
Jimi Mac provides expert SEO advice including audits, SEO campaigns and content creation. Contact us today to find out more.
