Everyone needs SEO. Really, we do. OK, but what is SEO and what does it mean? After all, it’s one of those Internet jargon bandwagons that everyone seems to have jumped on without really knowing what it is or how it works.
This article isn’t about paid search. It isn’t really about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) either. Mostly because a good website is naturally optimised for search. What this article is then, is a quick guide to what to do to make sure you get the best rankings you can by the search engines.
Code like a demon
This is one of those obvious ones really. If you build the site semantically (in a structured fashion, much like you might write a document), Google and the gang will spot that and work out what is relevant on the page and what is less relevant. It has nothing to do with how high up on the page it is. After all, “how high up” is subjective, depending on whether you’re browsing in Firefox or in a text based screen reader. If your code is semantic, then you’re a step towards search nirvana.
Get the content right
This is really the most important part of the whole process. If you have poor content, then you’re never going to get anywhere in the rankings. How do you write good content? Well, given that Google is effectively a big computer that understands the written word, you’re lumbered with a bit of an issue. First off, search engines scour pages for their content, and work out how many times and in what context words appear. Then when you search for them, it looks up which sites have the most “relevant” words in their content and displays that page as a link. One of the key reasons why the homepage isn’t always the most hit on a site is because there is content somewhere else being hit by search referrals.
In saying that, I’m not suggesting you just write rubbish with loads of the keywords you want people to reach you by. That won’t work. The search bots that spider your pages are clever enough to know if you’re just repeating yourself. Certainly write with search engines in mind. It’ll be no less readable, though you’ll have more keywords within the body of the text, but precisely because of this, it’ll appear higher in a search result.
What do the SEO companies do then?
Not a lot. I’m kidding guys, but it’s true that some of them (read many) are complete sharks. Actually that’s probably true of any segment of Internet based industry, and I’d hazard of any other too.
The ones that do a lot of work know what it takes to make your site appear high up in Google. They will do a few things that will help, but in truth, none of them can guarantee results, and most of it is really down to the content. That’s down to you or your client, whichever it is that is the content admin. They will add a few pages to the site full of keyword laden text that feels natural enough to a search engine but when you or I read it, it looks like a load of twaddle. This, coupled with a sitemap can help because the search engines see more pages with those keywords all over them, but it’s still not going to help if your content is poor.
So content is king, and while paid for software or companies specialising in Search Engine Optimisation can help, you’re better off first making sure your content is up to scratch. And that the search engines can see it.
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