Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

At least 90% of web users find sites and information using Search Engines and no doubt you can reaffirm that view by thinking about how and where you personally arrive at the information you need in any given circumstance.

 

Despite the best efforts of its main rivals, Yahoo and MSN, Google is predominant and has gained significant market share in the last year.

 

Although there are many debates about how the rise of social networking (‘the blog and wiki’ phenomenon) is impacting the way people find information and about how long the likes of Google can maintain a quality of information without everything turning to ‘grey goo’ it looks like Search Engines won’t be disappearing anytime soon and the challenge will remain for marketers to how they get noticed in search returns. The bottom line for many organisations in highly competitive markets is that Search Engine Marketing can make a huge difference to the bottom-line.

 

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is often described as a ‘black art’ and this is based simply on the fact that nobody really knows how the major Search Engines work. The blogosphere has given us some more insights in recent years with some useful resources emerging. The blog of one of Google’s highly respected developers Matt Cutts www.Mattcutts.com and Jill Whalen’s High Ranking Advisor www.highrankings.com are two of the most shining examples.

Search Engine Optimisation Advantages

  • Potentially more click-thrus than pay-per-click
  • Once you get it right – tends to stay right
  • Success is spread more widely 
  • Better long term Return on Investment

Search Engine Optimisation Disadvantages

  • No guarantees – you are at the whim of the algorithms
  • Can become a full-time job
  • Takes a varied and unpredictable time to see results

 

As is evident from this short list of pros and cons, Search Engine Optimisation is far less straightforward than pay-per-click but the returns on getting it right can be very significant.

 

The reason for this lies in research that shows where on a search return page a user typically looks and clicks. A company called Eyetools, www.eyetools.com produced a report last year that demonstrated what it described as the ‘golden triangle’. This shows where the majority of users click on any typical Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and underlines the significance of getting into the top 3 returns on any search page returns, whether that is via a top ‘pay-per-click’ entry or via search optimisation.

 

Content Management Systems and Search Engine Optimisation are intimately and deeply connected, particularly in three key areas:

1. Things that are built into the system
 

  • W3C XHTML compliance
  • Clean, uncluttered code
  • Friendly URLs
  • Automatically generated site maps
  • Accessible ‘text based’ navigation
  • Mandated actions
  • Image ‘Alt tag’ descriptions
  • Keyword and description metadata completion
  • Link checker.

 

2. Things that the user can do

 

  • Title tag creation and management
  • Structured and keyword rich content
  • Use of metadata
  • Manage links effectively
  • Create external links
  • Encourage back links
  • Create microsites and/or landing pages
  • Monitor and use stats to understand keyword use
  • Use 'long tail' keyphrase optimisation that looks beyond the most competitive terms.

 

3. Things to avoid

 

  • Duplicated content
  • Duplicated titles
  • Spelling errors
  • Dubious link arrangements
  • Bad SEO practices, such as hidden text and gateway sites.