Derrick
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By Patrick Gordon of Duo Marketing and Communications
Having a good website is one of the most important marketing tools, but with over 220 million websites (Netcraft.com) in existence, how can one stay ahead of the competition?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a detailed process which impacts on the success or failure of your site, if you don’t feature generally in the first five listings on the relevant browser; chances are your website will not reach the intended audience.
There are two ways round this, firstly you could pay someone to come in and build a SEO friendly site, alternatively if you do not have the budget, there are a number of relatively simple measures which just about anyone can implement. The first of these which every website should have are title, description and keyword metatags. These are pieces of html coding which help categorise your webpage, directing search engines to the relevant information.
The first of these tags the title, describes the website to the search engine. A number of businesses only include their name in their title, which if fine if you are a brand like Coke, but if you are not well known, it is important to include a few words defining your business e.g. Integrate Marketing: Leaders in Social Media.
Description, this comes directly below the title and provides the reader with a breakdown of the business/site. Both the title and description tags should be clear, concise and to the point. You only have limited space, so it is important to maximise it.
Keywords, everytime you search for a particular word/term the browser in question will look for relevant words on the web. Keywords help direct search bots to your website. They have lost some of their importance as search algorithms have developed, but they still have a role to play in search engine optimisation (SEO).
New content is another important SEO tool. Most websites content is relatively static, so to get around the issue, a dynamic easy to update page should be included, an example being a news or events section. This doesn’t have to be for press releases only; if you have a video, podcast or any other relevant media, it can be posted here to.
Outbound linking are links from your website to another site, these are easy to generate. Despite this they should only be used when relevant. Google is constantly looking for sites that stuff their pages with outbound links and will punish those who do not comply.
Inbound links, these are harder to generate as they rely on an outside source to link to the site. There are certain ways around this, for example when sending out a press release, include a link to your website under the contact details section. Alternatively use social media channels like facebook, twitter or personal blogs to drive traffic.
Register on relevant channels: Sitemaps serve as hierarchical list of web pages for spiders to analyse and list; Google Webmaster is probably the best known registration tool for sitemaps, but there are others. If Google struggles to operate on your site no matter how good it may look, you will not get good page rankings.
Equally important tool for web rankings is registering with the relevant web directories; these sites categorise and provide credible links. There are various ones to choose from, but the best known and probably most effective is DMoz.org.
On Google alone there are over 250 different factors affecting the ranking of your website, but if you start with the basics as listed above and are willing to constantly analyse and review your site, it is only a matter of time before you will be reaping the benefits.
Having a good website is one of the most important marketing tools, but with over 220 million websites (Netcraft.com) in existence, how can one stay ahead of the competition?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a detailed process which impacts on the success or failure of your site, if you don’t feature generally in the first five listings on the relevant browser; chances are your website will not reach the intended audience.
There are two ways round this, firstly you could pay someone to come in and build a SEO friendly site, alternatively if you do not have the budget, there are a number of relatively simple measures which just about anyone can implement. The first of these which every website should have are title, description and keyword metatags. These are pieces of html coding which help categorise your webpage, directing search engines to the relevant information.
The first of these tags the title, describes the website to the search engine. A number of businesses only include their name in their title, which if fine if you are a brand like Coke, but if you are not well known, it is important to include a few words defining your business e.g. Integrate Marketing: Leaders in Social Media.
Description, this comes directly below the title and provides the reader with a breakdown of the business/site. Both the title and description tags should be clear, concise and to the point. You only have limited space, so it is important to maximise it.
Keywords, everytime you search for a particular word/term the browser in question will look for relevant words on the web. Keywords help direct search bots to your website. They have lost some of their importance as search algorithms have developed, but they still have a role to play in search engine optimisation (SEO).
New content is another important SEO tool. Most websites content is relatively static, so to get around the issue, a dynamic easy to update page should be included, an example being a news or events section. This doesn’t have to be for press releases only; if you have a video, podcast or any other relevant media, it can be posted here to.
Outbound linking are links from your website to another site, these are easy to generate. Despite this they should only be used when relevant. Google is constantly looking for sites that stuff their pages with outbound links and will punish those who do not comply.
Inbound links, these are harder to generate as they rely on an outside source to link to the site. There are certain ways around this, for example when sending out a press release, include a link to your website under the contact details section. Alternatively use social media channels like facebook, twitter or personal blogs to drive traffic.
Register on relevant channels: Sitemaps serve as hierarchical list of web pages for spiders to analyse and list; Google Webmaster is probably the best known registration tool for sitemaps, but there are others. If Google struggles to operate on your site no matter how good it may look, you will not get good page rankings.
Equally important tool for web rankings is registering with the relevant web directories; these sites categorise and provide credible links. There are various ones to choose from, but the best known and probably most effective is DMoz.org.
On Google alone there are over 250 different factors affecting the ranking of your website, but if you start with the basics as listed above and are willing to constantly analyse and review your site, it is only a matter of time before you will be reaping the benefits.