Search Engine Optimisation, or more commonly known as SEO, is the technique used to help a website appear within the search results for your keywords. There are many companies that claim they can “do SEO” or make out that there is some sort of dark art to it. Or you may be unlucky to find a company that guarantees that they will have you on page one. This isn’t possible, SEO is an art or a science, but it isn’t an exact science. Like art, it take time to create perfection and in regards to its not being an exact science, well there are lots of variable and changing environments in science, that you must make adjustments for. However, over time and with careful planning and a good strategy it is possible to achieve position 1 in SERPs.
Techniques
Within every website, there are elements that a Search Engine’s bots and spiders will look at to ascertain how useful a website is to a users search results. If you have optimised your site to the appropriate keywords, this will put you in the running to appear in the results for those keywords, when a user types it into the search engine, or a variation of that keyword. Its important to remember that your keywords MUST BE relevant to your website and they must be searched terms. Simply, if you think of Google like the old fashioned yellow pages, there is no point in being in florist section if you are a plumber just because more people are looking for that.
Ensuring you use the correct techniques to implement your keywords into your website, will get you on the right path.
The techniques you implement onto your website aren’t just down to your keywords. Link building through content outreach is an important part in your strategy. More and more social media is playing a bigger role, to work along side your SEO in how to increase the ROI.
Content is King
Content is always an important part of a website, however, Google has definitely focused on this more in the last couple of years, finally clamping down on bad content with the release of their Panda updates. Ensure that your content is relevant to the users as well as what keywords you are targeting. As SEO continues to evolve the user experience on your website will play an ever increase role in how Google ranks your website. I believe a major part of this is the content; content that is engaging will help website conversions, which is only going to send signals to Google about the experience the users have on your website and therefore only benefit your SEO.
Analysis
SEO requires lots and lots of analysis to make sure your SEO works for you. Analysis, will allow you to investigate if your SEO Strategy is working for you, and where there is room for improvement. It will also allow you to understand where your strategy isn’t working and what changes you need to make. Deep analysis with various tools such as Google Analytics can give you an amazing amount of information on how your customers use your website.
This is a very brief outline of SEO. You still need to understand the techniques in depth, as well as having the right monitoring tools in place to help with your analysis. Like I previously mentioned SEO isn’t an exact science with an exact formula. What might work for one website, doesn’t mean it will work for another.