XMAS IDEAS: Climbing up the Google rankings

Search Engine Marketing is how we use the web to promote our business. A fundamental part of this is climbing the natural search engine listings.

This means increasing your sites's visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). Part of the process is updating and altering a website's content and code so it can be read by search engine spiders and ranked highly by search engine algorithms. What we're trying to achieve is more traffic through to a site via natural or organic search (SEO).

 

There are THREE main areas of focus:

1. Technical SEO  - the code on the page

This ensures that that search engines can read, interpret your site content. Key actions are as follows and you'll need your web developer's help with most of them:

  • make sure the code-to-content ratio is correct
  • add a Google sitemap if one doesn't already exist
  • check your website meets the latest xhtml standards
  • use cascading style sheets (all sites built since 2003 should use CSS)

 

2. Content SEO - relevant keywords in the right places, updated regularly

The objective for search engines is to consider content on your pages as relevant and therefore to rank the pages highly. Content is core to the success of any SEO initiative. Internal SEO covers the thought and process that must go into content creation. Google states that site owners should create a “useful, information-based site” and to “write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.”  Here Google is stressing the significance of content. A page written around a key phrase focus will have an incredible effect on search engine visibility. Next to this, content naturally gains long-tail key phrase positioning that a site owner wouldn’t necessarily target, bringing in qualified traffic. Adding other relevant pages will help as well, if you have more pages on your site, the more ways people have to find your site. If you have more relevant content, you will have more positioning opportunities. The more that your site is considered a “resource” in Google, the better your site's visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) will be.

 

Key actions are as follows:

  • conduct keyword analysis to determin which keywords your prospects are using to search for you and where you have the opportunity to stand out from the competition
  • review title tags (the text that appears in the very top of your browser bar) and make sure they are keyword rich, descriptive and engaging
  • use the right kind of html codes (e.g. STRONG for bold and EMPHASIS for italic
  • make sure you are using header tags (h1, h2 etc) correctly and filling with relevant keywords
  • fill the site with good keywords in the users' language, paying particular attention to internal and external links - the words you use here count for more
  • use related links throughout the site to a) drive users around the site and b) boost your search engine rankings

 

3. Public relations SEO - connecting your site to other relevant sites

Search engines rate the credibility of a site based on which other relevant sites link to it and how. As online strategy moves forward this particular aspect of SEO will become more important.

Key actions are:

  • start a link building strategy - if other sites with similar relevant content link to you, Google will rate you higher (particularly if they are a well trusted site)
  • set up profiles on a range of social networking sites including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Encourage your employees to do the same and link back to relevant content on your site
  • blogs, wikis and rss feeds are more popular tha forums in search results - so comment regularly on other high ranked blogs and create wiki articles
  • bookmark your site on key social bookmarking sites including delicious, digg.com and reddit. Try technorati if you are a techie company.
  • use video on your site - it's the most sought after content on the web and it's set to increase in importance.
  • set your company up on a range of search engine directories - major search engines do pay attention to these and use them to validate data from your site


Important final thought!
Successful implementation of any SEO strategy relies on a mixture of all of the above i.e. you might do well technical on the side of things but if you have bad content you will lose any of the gains you have made.