SEO basics for beginners SEO basics for beginners Contents What is Search Engine Optimisation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Why is Search Engine Optimisation important? 4 How Search Engines Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Google 7 SEO - What Determines Your Ranking? 8 Before you Start 9 Writing for the Web - The Rules 10 Tips for writing effective marketing copy 11 On Page Optimisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Managing Optimisation 13 Other Lingo 14 SEO practice to avoid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2 What is Search Engine Optimisation? Search Engine Optimisation is a form of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which allows you to connect your brand/ product/service with search engine users searching for it. There are 3 main ways in which you can market your website via Google: 1 Organic search engine listings (via SEO) 2 Paid search listings (Via Pay per Click PPC e g Google AdWords) 3 On other websites e g Google AdSense and Google Display Network 2 1 3 SEO basics for beginners Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) allows your site listing to be seen by users, and is the only method out of the three which does NOT incur a cost with every click The search results are displayed in a sequence according to relevance of match between the keyword phrase typed into the search engine and the web pages, according to the ranking algorithm used by the search engine It is the method of achieving placement on this part of the search engine results pages which is SEO Why is Search Engine Optimisation important? Over 81% of people will research their purchases online, whether they eventually buy online or not The majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines In the UK, in 2015, the search engine market remained a tale of three companies – Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Although social media and other types of traffic can generate visits to your website, search engines are the primary method of navigation for most Internet users 4 SEO is also much less expensive than PPC (Pay Per Click) enabling your site to have a presence amongst search results pages - as it’s effectively free SEO does not incur any cost per click; therefore you can obtain visibility on search engines with minimal costs, mainly time, incurred SEO is useful for driving visitors through targeting high volume, low intent generic phrases Quite often using PPC for these types of terms can be very costly, but if you use SEO for broader and more obscure terms, you can get visibility at no cost and you can then use your PPC budget to greater effect by focusing on more specific and specialised terms While SEO is about increasing the visibility of your site across search engines overall, it is important to remember that often consumers will not travel past the first or second pages of search results therefore it is vital to try and rank as highly as possible within search results 5 SEO basics for beginners How Search Engines Work Fundamentally when you search for keywords using search engines, it works as follows: However search engines rank their listings in radically different ways, which is why you may find that your website can rank high under a specific keyword term on one search engine and not at all on another 6 Google When you carry out a Google search, you’re almost instantly presented with a list of results from all over the web Google creates its listings automatically by “crawling” the web compiling a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page and keeping a copy in a ‘cache’ database When a user enters a query, Google’s machines search the index for matching pages and return the results they believe are the most relevant to the user, determined by a range of on and off page factors such as the use of relevant keywords within urls, page names and copy, responsive design, site speed, relevant backlinks and regular content updates NOTE: A spider or ‘robot’ is server-side software which compiles an index containing every word on every page along with the page address / URL These spiders find your website by reading and following links from other websites onto yours 7 SEO basics for beginners SEO - What determines your ranking? Search engines use algorithms to weight different factors of a website to determine which pages of which websites most closely match the search term query Each search engine uses different variations of search algorithms, which is why you will notice visible differences in your rankings across different search engines Search engine algorithms are regularly updated to provide better accuracy and relevancy to users using these search engines therefore it is important to be aware of any algorithm updates which occur, as this has the potential to have a huge impact on how your website ranks in search results pages One example of this would be Google’s ‘Mobilegeddon’ update in 2015 which was designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results and websites which weren’t responsive saw their rankings fall SEO has two major components, on page and off page SEO On page optimisation • Optimized titles and descriptions • Proper URL Structures • User friendly navigation (breadcrumbs, user sitemaps) • Optimized internal links • Text Formatting (use of h1,h2,bold etc) • Image optimization (image size, proper image names, use of ALT tag) • User friendly 404 pages • Fast loading pages: While page speed is important to Google and for your rankings, it also impacts your user experience as a better experience often leads to better conversions • Fresh content • External links (no broken links or links to ‘bad’ sites) Off page optimisation • Link Building • Social Media • Social bookmarking 8 Before you start: set goals What goals are you trying to meet? What are your objectives? e g - to increase visitor numbers to your site, to increase bookings, to appear under a specific keyword (NOT your property name! You want to be visible to people who don’t yet know you ) Whatever the goals, it is important that you work to them Before you start: identify what terms people search Before you can optimise your website, you need to know what keywords to include This means identifying the core words and phrases which potential customers are searching for which have relevance to your website Searcher Behaviour There are three stages to the ‘search journey’ (how people search on Google etc) that users typically follow: 1 Explorer – browsing stage, looking for inspiration: Example search term - B&B Belfast 2 Hunter – Now have made their mind up about exact requirements : Example search term – B&B Malone Belfast 3 Tracker – Now at booking stage – B&B Malone Belfast best rates Searchers typically start off just browsing and continue to refine their search to more and more specific search terms as they come closer to booking (You can use the following tool to approximate searches: http://tools seobook com/keyword-tools/seobook/index php) Some ‘Lingo’ Short tail of search: the all-encompassing ‘broad’ keywords that drive large amounts of traffic but usually from people not ready to book Long tail of search: the very specific keywords that drive much less traffic to a site, but tends to be from people more ready to book NOTE: It is important to appear under both types, because if people don’t see you at all in the early stage you are not likely to be considered later 9 SEO basics for beginners Keyword tools To assist you in finding out how people search and what words they use, there are free tools on the web that you can use, such as the Google Keyword Planner, however you will need a Google Adwords account to access this Your website stats package (Google Analytics) is also an essential source of information to monitor the keywords that are successfully driving traffic Writing for the web - the rules 1 Include the keywords and phrases where possible within web copy, with the most important of the keywords as close to the start of the copy as possible (and in headings where appropriate) however do not overstuff copy, it should still read well and make sense 2 Grab the reader Tell them what they want to know and get straight to the point The first few lines are often the only ones a visitor to your site will read If they don’t convey the really important information, chances are that information will never be seen 3 Keep paragraphs short and use bullet points where possible so that content can be skimmed at a glance 4 Formalistic language slows the reader down Try not to use complicated language when basic or everyday terms can be used instead 10