Wednesday , February 15 , 2012

The SEO Newsletter

In this edition of the Techize newsletter I want to touch on Search Engine Optimisation and what it means to you, your website, your sales, and your audience.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is something everyone with a website needs to be concerned about. Without good SEO and good placement within SERP (Search Engine Results Page) your web site/page will not be found, meaning fewer people will visit your site and therefore fewer results from your website, be it brand awareness, sales etc.

What is important with SEO and SERP

There are three things that are important for SEO.

Content of the page.

Im listing this first as it’s the most important aspects of SEO. The wrong content not only makes the search engines index you for the wrong key words/phrases but makes people run away and not want to spend time on your site. Content is easier than you might think though. Write information that is related to your site, don’t write about everything and anything, but keep it specific, that way your website becomes an authority on that topic. In other words, if you are selling red tractors and the accessories for red tractors, don’t have content that’s about sailing boats. The two are not related!  People looking for information on sailing boats are not going to want to buy red tractor accessories, and people wanting to buy a red tractor really don’t want a sailing boat!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

This one is obvious, make it look appealing, tasteful  and the sort of place people will want to do business with.  This all comes down to the “fresh farm eggs/free flying lessons” discussion.

Additionally, don’t forget the Search engines need to be able to read the site as well!

Inbound Links

And finally the inbound links. These are the links from other websites through to your site. The more you have with meaningful link text the better. This doesn’t mean you should go out there and sign up for all the link exchange programs available but you should go and find the best websites, blogs, forums and social media for you, join in the conversations and get some links back to your website.

For a little more of an insight have a look at What’s all the fuss about SEO?

Reviewing your existing Site

There are two sites that are useful when reviewing your site. The first site, www.opensiteexplorer.org has some useful  metrics for giving you some ideas as to how people are finding your site.  They do offer a full paid service, but the teaser/basic service is actually really useful initially. You can see the links you are getting from other sites, how well your site ranks, total links etc.

Another really useful site is http://marketing.grader.com This site will review your entire site, facebook likes, twitter tweets, blog posts etc and give you some advice and ideas on how to improve the overall ranking. Worth a look!

What to do now?

Just ask yourself a couple of questions to work out the next steps.

Does your website need a face lift, are you showing flying lessons when you should be selling farm eggs? – Yes? Talk to me about the revamp and redesign of your website.

Only a few links to your website? Then you need to go out there and get some links to your site. If you are not too sure how to do this, have a chat with me and I’ll help you out.

Are you confused about the social media aspects of the web and how they impact your business? Pick up the phone and give me a call, or drop me an email and lets work out what is needed for you.

Thanks for reading this edition of the Techize newsletter, feel free to pass it on to colleagues and friends who may find it useful, better yet, get them to subscribe and get their own edition next month!