What is Search Engine Optimisation?
There is no better place to start than at the basics, so what is SEO and what will you actually get out of it? I have tried to break this down on this page. There are several areas and the information is brought to you from seobarnsley.co.uk.
Technical
This is the part that a lot of consultants miss, normally as they claim to be experts and are not or they are juniors. This is the code and elements that every day Tom and Bill will never see. But it influences the page you do see and so influences the quality of the website. Google loves quality so the higher the quality of your website the more Google will love it.
This part of the puzzle;
Code
Site navigation
Architecture
Sitemap
URL structure
Audits
Structure
Technical on page
Authorship
Ownership
Author rank
I have not gone into each part in huge detail as I would end up creating a book rather than an overview website :-) and this theme follows down the page. If you want further info please contact us.
Just to recap this section - its all about making sure your website has validated code, well structured pages, connection between author and content, making sure all the bits & pieces do what you say (for example no links are broken) and to make sure that people and search engines can navigate the whole website.
This part of the puzzle;
Code
Site navigation
Architecture
Sitemap
URL structure
Audits
Structure
Technical on page
Authorship
Ownership
Author rank
I have not gone into each part in huge detail as I would end up creating a book rather than an overview website :-) and this theme follows down the page. If you want further info please contact us.
Just to recap this section - its all about making sure your website has validated code, well structured pages, connection between author and content, making sure all the bits & pieces do what you say (for example no links are broken) and to make sure that people and search engines can navigate the whole website.
Off Site
What do we mean?
Links and link building
Inbound links
Media types
Link types
Social mentions
Reputation
This section is about all the things that are not on your website but influence its performance in the search engines. So for example someone on twitter puts a link on a post to your website, this impacts your website as it gives you more creditability (in general). The key to this section is natural quality. Not forced rubbish. You should build an off site presence in a good way and its not just to boost you up the rankings. Think about it as brand awareness and marketing, rather than just link building.
There are some really good resources to help you tweak things and keep you on track at http://searchengineland.com/ and http://www.seroundtable.com/.
Links and link building
Inbound links
Media types
Link types
Social mentions
Reputation
This section is about all the things that are not on your website but influence its performance in the search engines. So for example someone on twitter puts a link on a post to your website, this impacts your website as it gives you more creditability (in general). The key to this section is natural quality. Not forced rubbish. You should build an off site presence in a good way and its not just to boost you up the rankings. Think about it as brand awareness and marketing, rather than just link building.
There are some really good resources to help you tweak things and keep you on track at http://searchengineland.com/ and http://www.seroundtable.com/.
On Site
Content
What we mean
Types of content
Strategy
Relevancy & Topic
Production
Social
Outbound social
Blog
Forum
Reporting
Commentary
This is everything on the website that you see and use. The content, the news area, the comments from guests etc etc. This is key to ensure you have a solid base to work on. Making sure you have a solid strategy and a method of production in place is essential to the success of your onsite work. Its not as quick and simple as writing a couple of articles and leaving it to it.
Progression and continual improvements.
What we mean
Types of content
Strategy
Relevancy & Topic
Production
Social
Outbound social
Blog
Forum
Reporting
Commentary
This is everything on the website that you see and use. The content, the news area, the comments from guests etc etc. This is key to ensure you have a solid base to work on. Making sure you have a solid strategy and a method of production in place is essential to the success of your onsite work. Its not as quick and simple as writing a couple of articles and leaving it to it.
Progression and continual improvements.
On Page
Content placement
What goes where
keywords
What are they
Density
Semantics
Placement
Best practice
Header tag
Alt text
Meta
Page title
This is a further development to the last point, but because it is so critical I have separated it out. This is all about what you do with the content on the page and how you optimise it. This is about placement of keywords and phrases and making your content shareable. By this I mean generating a page people want to talk about and link to. These elements are the ones that get you ahead of the competition and keep you on the road to victory.
All the jargon in the list above really means is every element of the page! So one example is in your browser window where you are reading this there will most likely be a tab at the top of it. Inside that tab it will say "SEO Barnsley - Home". This is the page title tag and it is also what shows up in the search engines as the title. But this does not show up any where on the actual page. Some websites have this field auto populated by the content title (the content title on this page is "What is search engine optimisation?") and you don't want to do that.
What goes where
keywords
What are they
Density
Semantics
Placement
Best practice
Header tag
Alt text
Meta
Page title
This is a further development to the last point, but because it is so critical I have separated it out. This is all about what you do with the content on the page and how you optimise it. This is about placement of keywords and phrases and making your content shareable. By this I mean generating a page people want to talk about and link to. These elements are the ones that get you ahead of the competition and keep you on the road to victory.
All the jargon in the list above really means is every element of the page! So one example is in your browser window where you are reading this there will most likely be a tab at the top of it. Inside that tab it will say "SEO Barnsley - Home". This is the page title tag and it is also what shows up in the search engines as the title. But this does not show up any where on the actual page. Some websites have this field auto populated by the content title (the content title on this page is "What is search engine optimisation?") and you don't want to do that.
Measurement
Traffic
Google analytics
Source/medium
Volume
KPI's
Webmasters review and summary
Alexa
Keyword performance
Success factors
By arrangement
Like anything in business you need to monitor what you are doing to ensure a return on investment. That's all this section is about. Make sure you have good KPI's and monitoring tools in place to track progress and alert you to issues.
Google analytics
Source/medium
Volume
KPI's
Webmasters review and summary
Alexa
Keyword performance
Success factors
By arrangement
Like anything in business you need to monitor what you are doing to ensure a return on investment. That's all this section is about. Make sure you have good KPI's and monitoring tools in place to track progress and alert you to issues.
Conclusion
Above I talk a lot about elements of optimisation and what is involved. In a nut shell SEO is all about getting traffic from the search engines to your website without paying per click for advertising. But what I have not mentioned is what it isn't. I mention this as many people consider it to be much more than it is and expect to much, and on the other hand some people expect to little.
Your consultant should not be a coder or a conversion expert. They should not be a designer or a copy writer. They should be an expert in search engine optimisation. They have to have a core understanding of all these other roles but should not be expected to specialise in them. They should alert you when an expert in one of these fields is required but by asking them to do too much means they wont have the time to keep on top of the ever changing search engines and you start to miss opportunities.
I hope this page has helped you in some way, please get in touch for a chat if you want to go into further detail.
Your consultant should not be a coder or a conversion expert. They should not be a designer or a copy writer. They should be an expert in search engine optimisation. They have to have a core understanding of all these other roles but should not be expected to specialise in them. They should alert you when an expert in one of these fields is required but by asking them to do too much means they wont have the time to keep on top of the ever changing search engines and you start to miss opportunities.
I hope this page has helped you in some way, please get in touch for a chat if you want to go into further detail.