*Clarity In Marketing

SEO (search engine optimisation) is about achieving good natural search results for your web pages. It’s a tricky but important task that should be part of your marketing mix. In this article Clarity's Mike Lewis looks at SEO best practice your website authors should incorporate to improve your natural search rankings. 

This article doesn’t cover everything you need to know about SEO – that would require a book. Rather it identifies seven important steps your website authors need to follow to support and maximise your SEO activities by making your pages search engine friendly.

Why is SEO important?

SEO is one side of a coin. The flip side is SEM (search engine marketing) or paid for ads in search engines typically sponsored links (usually above the search results) or adwords (usually on the right of the search results).

Following SEO best practice when creating your web pages can increase the likelihood of them appearing on the crucial first page of search results. If your pages rank well in the unpaid results you may be able to move your paid search budget to areas where you perform less well or reduce it in that area. Alternatively you may want to maintain your paid search to capture more of the links on the results page. You should always test the impact of increasing and decreasing paid search to see the impact and continue to monitor results.

SEO best practice

Search engines are constantly refining the ways they rank pages. SEO practices that were advocated a few years ago would now be considered spamming. The good news is search engines are working to make their assessments relate to how people read pages so good SEO practice should help to make your pages easier for your customers to read too.

7 steps for SEO best practice

1. Select keywords carefully

Don't jam in as many keywords as you can. Be selective and be focused. This article is about SEO best practice for webpage authors so the keywords should relate to that alone. Including other keywords about Clarity, the services and markets we serve for example, will confuse the search engines as to them these are unrelated. The result is the search engines will not be clear what the page is about and will not know how to categorise it so your ranking will suffer.

Your keywords should relate to the content and be what people are likely to search for. So don't forget to consider the benefits and features of your product or service.

2. Put keywords in the title tag

The title tag determines what appears in the top left hand corner of the browser window and as the title in the search results. You should put your key words first to tell the search engines what the page is about. But remember people will also see this as the title in the search results so make sure it is relevant and meaningful.

3. Description meta tag

Meta tags are text not normally visible on the page itself but included in the page code.

Search engines will check the description meta tag to identify what the page is about. Therefore it should include your keywords. It should be one or two sentences - approximately 200 words. Search engines may use this tag to describe the page in the search results so it should be meaningful to readers too.

4. Keywords meta tag

The keywords meta tag is one that was important a few years ago. Today it is ignored by Google (which accounts for 65 percent of searches) though Yahoo! (21%)* still uses it. As you have identified the keywords for the page already you might as well add them in - you never know when they might become important again. This tag is not normally seen by your readers and should just be a list of your keywords or phrases separated by commas.

5. Use keywords in headings

Search engines scan headings in pages to add to their understanding of what the page is about. Your readers will also use the headings to understand and scan your page. So headings should include your keywords. However, unlike people, search engines will only recognise a heading if it's identified as such by the HTML. Make sure your authors use the standard HTML codes for headings - H1, H2, H3 etc. Using CSS the format can be set to match your site style.

6. Don't forget the body text

Most important for search engines and your readers is the actual body text. The first and last paragraph should contain the same keywords as the title tags so the search engines can confirm the page is actually about the keywords. The body copy should also contain the same keywords that appear in the meta tags, title tag and headings. If it doesn't the search engine will be unsure what the page is about and it is therefore unlikely to receive a decent ranking.

7. URLs and hyperlinks

Search engines will also look at the URL of a page so use your your keywords for example, www.mysite.com/seo-best-practice.html. Avoid cryptic names and long strings of numbers.

One last area to consider are any internal and external hyperlinks. Search engines will note linked text and the URL of the page or site it is linking to. If the two correlate this reassures the search engine that the link goes to a relevant page and assuming the URL and linked text contain your keywords, will be another point in your favour.

SEO best practice

Make sure your site authors follow these seven steps for SEO best practice and you you’re your SEO activities are maximised and increase the likelihood of getting decent search engine rankings for your pages.

Find out how to make SEO work for your business - ask Clarity In Marketing.
 
* Hitwise, April 2007