SEO - a beginners guide

 

If you're baffled by search engine optimisation (or SEO) and thinking of paying someone a ridiculous amount of money to sort it out for you, wait until you've read this short article!

We're not saying that you should do it yourself, but you really should do a bit of research before you give your hard earned money to someone who promises the earth and may well not deliver.

Actions to take:

Buy or borrow a simple book to introduce you to the basics. We recommend "Getting Noticed on Google" by Ben Norman. For more detail, try "Search Engine Optimisation for Dummies" by Peter Kent or "When Search Meets Usability" by Shari Thurow and Nick Musica.

Check that your web designers are doing the essential work to your website to ensure SEO is considered. Ask them about headers, alt tags, meta tags, page structure, page titles, and meta descriptions/keywords. These are all essential tools in improving your SEO results.

Check your web content is search engine friendly by ensuring your keywords are all covered in a natural, but effective way. Repetition of the same words over and over again, or "hidden" keywords will just make search engines ignore your site.

Submit your site to the major search engines. You'll need the help of your web designer or programmer, but can do most of it yourself. Make sure you register your website with Google Analytics so that you can measure your traffic. Check out Google AdWords if you want to pay to advertise with them – they have a starter package which is very easy to use.

Try and source appropriate websites that can link to yours. Avoid the companies that promise to put your link on 600 other sites (often totally irrelevant ones). That will just look as though you're spamming. Google your keywords and check which sites come up in the results. If there are directories on the list, or websites open to having relevant links (sometimes linking from yours back to theirs in return), contact them.

Analyse your results. Check Google Analytics, do searches on the major search engines at regular intervals to check your position in the results, and keep your content fresh and up to date.

By following this advice, you should find that you become a lot more confident about SEO, whether you decide to try and do it yourself or select an agency to help you. If you’d like any more help or advice, contact manage my website.