You've got a business, you've got a website...now you want to grow, and to do that you need to be found in search results.
Welcome to the wacky and wonderful world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The first thing to understand: there is no one master 'checklist' of steps to follow. SEO is highly subjective and techniques are constantly evolving (in time with search engine algorithms).
Search engines operate like a black box; there are entire forums (like Moz.com and Search Engine Land) dedicated to sharing hypotheses about how search engine algorithms work, and testing the value of various SEO techniques.
To simplify things, we can focus on four key tenets for SEO:
1. Choose specific keywords.
The first and most important step to an SEO campaign is to select a specific set of target keywords.
Keyword selection requires a company to carefully consider their business, target demographics, conversion rates and customer searching habits; it is as much a business analysis as a technical activity.
The process of determining the target set of keywords is called Keyword Research, and is usually conducted as the first part of an SEO project. Once completed, keyword selection forms the basis of the other SEO activities that tailor content, website structure, page structure, and links according to the chosen keywords.
It is important to note that you don’t have to necessarily perform SEO on the entire website; in many cases, you are only looking to increase traffic to a specific page within the website (e.g. a specific service you offer), so you can focus much of your effort on that page (at least to start).
This is a good time to figure out if you need to hire an SEO specialist to help you achieve the results you're looking for.
If your there is a lot of competition for your keywords, you'll want the extra help. On the other hand, if you're still in a relatively unclaimed market and don't have a lot of competition (yet), you might be able to get away with some basic SEO on your own.
2. Craft high-quality content.
The ultimate goal of any search engine is to provide the most relevant results to its users. Consequently, the easiest way to earn (and keep) high-ranking results is to be the most relevant to your users.
The more people who search for a topic and consequently choose your site, the better your results will be over time.
According to the latest research, and information released by search engines themselves, “high-quality” content: is easy to read, provides direct, actionable information relevant to the query, and delivers legitimate content.
Some ways to accomplish this include:
- Crafting the page title to reflect the keyword(s), but in a natural way that is also meaningful to visitors.
- Providing unique content on each page. Amalgamate duplicate pages, or use rel=canonical to identify primary content for search engines.
- Use a content vehicle to draft visitors (e.g. infographic, tool, checklist, how-to guide, webinar, Q&A, blog post); a piece that offers unique value to your potential customers in some way.
- Talk about the topic in a real, meaningful way to organically capture potential search terms related to your topic
- Explicitly use directly related terms. Discover these terms through the earlier Keyword Research, and through available tools like nTopic, which analyze related terms.
Be careful, though - don’t over-engineer it. This means avoiding ‘forced’ language, as well as unnatural repetition; search engines can and do penalize websites that try to ‘game’ the system unnaturally.
If you write for human beings, you’re more likely to stay out of trouble with the search engines (and, not coincidentally, will build a better website while you’re at it).
3. Structure the website
Page optimization was once the primary focus of SEO.
Now, the tailoring of an individual web page to increase search results is just one part of an overall web search optimization strategy.
- Use good web design principles to create a website that users want to use, which increases page views and time on site, and thereby increases rank. Keep the back end clean and uncluttered.
- Create a site map and make it readily accessible to search engines. This helps search engines crawl your pages.
- Use structured data to tell web crawlers important information in their own language. Increase share-ability and crawl-ability by clearly identifying information in formats readable to search engines (e.g. Authorship, Publisher, Business information, Facebook links, Twitter feeds,) so that it looks more professional in search results – and therefore more inviting to users.
- Be strategic about your URLs. Keep them short and human-readable, for easy sharing (and thus, link-building).
- Be equally strategic about title tags. Use keywords near the beginning of the page title, and be descriptive, but not forced. Try and use natural language.
4. Build links
Search engines consider the number of links to a page as part of the algorithm used to determine a page’s likely value to a user.
There are two types of links to consider in SEO: internal (within the website), and external (from other sites).
The most valuable kind of internal link is embedded in page content, early on in the page using descriptive text (“anchor text”). Navigation links, and links attached to images, are not as strong as links directly from page content; links that say ‘click here’ are not a seen as a search engine favourite, and are also falling out of favour among web developers.
External links are harder to build; they must generally be ‘earned’ by providing useful content that people naturally want to link to from their own web pages. Advertising campaigns can increase visibility of content, which can lead to links (in the form of social ‘shares’) or by increasing visibility of your content to potential users. But ultimately good content breeds external links organically. And keep in mind: links from highly ranked pages are worth more to your own rankings than lower ranked pages.
Start simple: file local listings with a consistent name, address and phone number. Then, build a few links and citations from locally or industry-focused websites.
You can try and find central, trusted sources that can link outwards to your site, like business directories and professional service groups – but bear in mind, being on a long lists of links is not as valuable as being one of only a few on a page.
And although it may be tempting, don’t bother paying a service for links en masse in order to trick search engines; this may work temporarily, but search engines weed out such links eventually.
And, as with anything, if you aren't tech-savvy, do consider hiring a web developer or SEO specialist for some extra help.
