What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation explained

If you’re looking for a Website Copywriter, you’ll have come across the “SEO” term. What is SEO and why is it so important in website content? The Web Copywriter explains how Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques can help lift the Google search engine ranking of your website and increase online traffic.

Improving your organic Google Search ranking

You’ll see statistics saying 80% of people find websites by search engine. That’s wrong. It’s now actually slightly less than 50% but that’s still a big number. So if you want people to find your wonderful website, it needs to place highly in Google’s “organic” search results. For that to happen your site needs Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This means structuring and writing your website’s content in a way that will encourage Search Engines (like Google) to believe that your website’s pages are more relevant than your competitors. How do you do that? Well, it starts with your choice of keywords.

Keywords: the foundation of SEO

Keywords (or Keyword Phrases) are the terms people enter into Google (or other search engine) when they’re searching for goods, services or information. Keywords are the foundation for all SEO work, but how do you choose those keywords?

Which keywords to choose

There are two things to consider in choosing your keywords:

What do people search for?

You might think that you know which words your customers are searching for. But many businesses make the mistake of thinking from their own perspective rather than their customer’s. For example, you might think that you are a “Swimming Coach” but more people search for “Swimming Lessons” so you would be better to optimise for “Swimming Lessons”. Try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think, “What terms would I enter if I was looking to BUY what I’m selling?”.

Can you afford to optimise for the most popular keywords?

Life would be much simpler if you could just optimise for the most popular keywords. Unfortunately, all your competitors want exactly the same keywords. So if you optimise for the most popular keywords it can lead to a couple of undesirable situations:

  • 1. It can be hard to rank highly in the organic search results
  • 2. It can be expensive to run an SEM campaign.

Choosing your keywords then is a balancing act between popularity and affordability. You need to identify phrases that people genuinely search for, but also keywords that you have some chance of competing for – both in terms of natural and paid search (i.e. SEM).

Keyword Analysis Tools

Fortunately there are a number of online tools available to help you perform a Keyword Analysis. A good Keyword Analysis tool will do three things:

    1. Suggest possible keyword phrases
    2. Show how often the keyword phrases have been searched for
    3. Indicate the level of competitive interest (i.e. How expensive will its cost-per-click be?)

Popular Keyword Analysis Tools

Yahoo Keyword Assist

This used to be the Keyword tool of choice but Yahoo had an annoying habit of moving its location every few months. Now you have to set up an account to access it whereas it was previously available as a standalone pop-up. Not as popular as it once was.

Wordtracker – www.wordtracker.com

Wordtracker is the tool used by SEO professionals but it’s not free. You’ll have to pay US$59/month though you can sign up for a free 7-day trial. Its advantage is that it uses “Metacrawlers” – a system that searches multiple search engines. Wordtracker claims that this produces more accurate results because it’s harder for companies to manipulate results. The disadvantage is that you have to export your results for inclusion in an SEM campaign. But it’s massive drawback for local businesses is that its results aren’t Australia-specific.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com.au/select/KeywordToolExternal

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is free and can be used as a standalone tool or as part of your Google Adwords account. The advantage of this tool is that having chosen your keywords, you can seamlessly integrate them into your Search Engine Marketing campaign. Its big advantage over Wordtracker is that it tracks results not just for Australia – but by state, region or city.

Google Traffic Estimator
https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

This is a good tool to use in concert with the Keyword Tool. It lets you know how many clicks you can expect per day for particular keywords – and how much you would pay in Cost-Per-Clicks (CPCs) if you ran a Search Engine Marketing campaign.

For more SEO Tools, click here.

What to look for in Keyword Analysis

If you’re a heavy hitter or you’re in a not very competitive sector, choosing your keywords is simple: pick the top couple of keyword phrases in terms of Average Search Volume. If you are in a competitive sector and you can’t afford to compete with the big boys, you need to be a little smarter. You’ll avoid the top phrases and look for a keyword niche. Ideally you want to find a term that has a strong search volume but low Advertiser competition. (i.e. Customers search for this keyword phrase but your competitors don’t know it.)

Creating a Keyword niche you can afford

One of the best ways to create a keyword niche is to add terms to a very popular keyword phrase. Here are some of your options:

• Geography – If you’re a sole trader windscreen repairer then it would be pointless to choose “windscreen repairer” because the national players would beat you every time. But by being more specific with your geography (e.g. “windscreen repairer dubbo”), you will get fewer hits but they will be well qualified so your conversion rate (i.e. clicks that turn into sales) will be much higher.

• Quality – Which end of the market are you? Budget or boutique? By including terms like “cheap” or “luxury” you can refine your target market, reduce your CPCs and increase your conversion rate. And don’t use “inexpensive” rather than “cheap”. People don’t search for “inexpensive accommodation”, they search for “cheap hotels”.
- e.g. Not “chocolate bars” but “gourmet chocolate bars”

• Availability – Are your services available 24/7? Do you offer a mobile service? If so, including these elements in your keyword phrase can help differentiate you from your competitors, deliver more qualified prospects and lower your cost of sales.

• Specificity – Try to be as specific as you can in defining your product area. Instead of being “car mechanic” perhaps you are a “P76 car mechanic”. That wouldn’t seem like a particularly smart niche to carve out, but you get the idea.

The bonus is that your keyword niche still contains the most popular keyword phrase. i.e. A “P76 car mechanic” is still a “car mechanic”.

Why choose Primary and Secondary Keywords?

You don’t just choose one Keyword phrase for two reasons:

    1. It’s boring to read copy that doesn’t include variations
    2. Your keyword density will be too high and you risk being penalised by the search engines.

As well as a primary keyword phrase, you should choose a secondary keyword phrase, and a couple of other additional keyword phrases. This allows you to optimise your search performance, retain the interest of your reader and keep your keyword density within acceptable levels. (More about keyword density later).

Keywords by page rather than site

If you’re a small, very focused business you might be able to get away with just choosing keywords for your site and optimising for those same words on every single page. For most companies however, you need to choose keywords on a page-by-page basis. This is not a bad thing; it’s a good thing. It gives you the opportunity to hone your audience for every product or service you offer.

For example, if you’re in the mortgage market, you won’t just optimise for “Mortgages” or “Home loans” on every page of your site. It would be smarter to create pages of your site to deal with the various types of mortgages and loans. So you would have a page for “Reverse equity home loans” and optimise for that keyword phrase on that page, and have a “No deposit home loan” page optimised for that phrase, and so on.

Optimising your site for keywords

Having chosen your keywords, you now need to “optimise” your site for them. But what does that mean exactly? We are going to show you several ways in which you can use keywords to enhance your site’s natural search ranking. They are not listed in order of importance. Rather they are listed in the order in which you go about creating a website.

SEO & Domain name (i.e. www.domain-name.com.au)

This decision may not be within your control but if you haven’t yet chosen a domain name you need to consider the SEO implications before you do.

Use keywords and dashes between words

Search engines read your domain name (i.e. http://www.cheap-flights.com.au) looking for keywords. So if for example someone searched for “cheap flights” it would see the domain www.cheap-flights.com.au as a match. It would also recognise cheap.flights.com.au.

However if you use underscore or run the words together (e.g. cheap_flights.com.au or cheapflights.com.au), Google won’t rate the domain name as highly. Google is able to detect a word within a group of letters but it will give precedence to words that are formally separated by either a “-“ or a “.”.

You’ll also find that generally when you search for a domain name with the keywords running together that all the good ones are gone. However, if you add dashes between keywords, you’ll often find it hasn’t been taken. For example, petgrooming.com.au is taken whereas pet-grooming.com.au is not.

Usability and memorability considerations

Having said that, it’s harder to type in a dash and it’s harder to get people to remember it. For example, you’d prefer to be able to tell people that they should go to hotairballoons.com.au rather than hot-dash-air-dash-balloons-dot-com-dot-au – particularly if you’re running a radio ad campaign. You also won’t capture the person who just types in hotairballoons.com.au to see what comes up. In SEO – as in life – you are always trying to balance a range of considerations. In an ideal world though, your domain name will contain a keyword phrase.

Update: Google prefers a domain name of the format www.keyword1keyword2.com rather than www.keyword1-keyword2.com. It once preferred the hyphen now it does not. Look here for spectacular confirmation on the SEO impact of dumping the hyphen from a domain name.

SEO & Page URL

Don’t stop at the homepage when you’re thinking about optimising URLs. Every page of your site should be uniquely identified with a URL that contains relevant and popular keyword phrases – with the words separated by dashes. Many sites fail to optimise to this level and miss a valuable opportunity.

For example, this link farm has a valuable domain name:

http://www.diskdrives.com.au

But when you click on the page for External Drives, this is the URL you get:

http://www.diskdrives.com.au/result.php?Lfzxpset%3EFyufsobm%27f%3Ebv%3CBV%3C68%3C2%3C2%3C8624662%3Ctuzmf2%6068%2Fdtt%3C3%3Cjoufsdptnpt%60bggjmjbuf%603%60e3s%60efsq%3Cfnnbgx%3Cfnnbgx%3C2991%3A%3C2991%3A%3Cdmfbo%3C%3C0e0tfbsdi0q0joufsdptnpt0ynm0epnbjomboefs0joum0e3s0gfg0qpqdbu0w30%3Cenynm%2Fjoufsdptnpt%2Fpwfsuvsf%2Fdpn%27c%3E%5BHm%7Bb3SzbY%5Bmdz6kc31vZYV%3E%27qpt%3E6%27tfbsdi%60uzqf%3Esfmbufe%27enybsht%3E17pFOzb5%5BHKcMVYkzWWS%60S6S%5Bs3zw97LYbc2UK%5B.uqebTgzKE.ZRcMZ%3AWb%5B1iD8j1Sesv8UGPOjiP9ngkyE11.KUuHdFQ9ReroJZP..cmP47Judg43%3A4Rf2RpCcpfhhet.mrr1dS%7Bd4b4wxzyZcG5IIrUip5s6qkG53D.p1jiPqZJR2jzhln2txrrlVsLshd%7BDLftHClKibpNpk%5Bckce6Zf1%3AURpDV3ffEyR%2F%2F-ZU1%7B%27jqvb%60je%3E3332935

A better URL for this page would be diskdrives.com.au/external-drives. However, an even better URL would be diskdrives.com.au/external-disk-drives because it gives you the opportunity to repeat a really important keyword phrase. Then when you get down to individual product page for “LaCie external hard drives”, the URL should be “diskdrives.com.au/external-disk-drives/lacie-external-disk-drives”. Create a unique keyword-rich URL for every page – and then make sure that the developers implement that URL.

SEO & Page Title

The Page Title is the text that appears across the top of your web browser page. The browser finds out what to display as your page title by looking at the Meta Title tags in your HTML source code.

The Page Title is very important to search engines – more important than your domain name. In fact, in this analysis of SEO factors by a range of experts, the Meta Title tag was rated the most important factor. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Yet, many sites fail to optimise their page titles with keywords. How often do we see across the top of a web browser “Welcome to John Smith & Sons”, or “johnsmith.com.au”, or worst of all, “Home”? Here are some rules, guidelines and tips for creating better page titles:

• Tailor your page title for each page – Don’t just create a page title for the site and replicate it on each page. Google will penalise you if you do.

• Make your page title 40-60 characters long (including spaces) – There is no point making the page title any longer. The search engines won’t look at it.

• Include your primary and secondary keyword phrases

• List phrases in order of importance – Don’t list the company name first, unless the company name contains your primary keyword. Start with your primary keyword phrase, then have your secondary keyword phrase and so on. List the company name last – if at all. Do not give up a keyword phrase for the company name. An important thing to remember is that while search engines look at page titles, people rarely do.

• Don’t overstuff – Use your keywords but exercise some moderation or the search engines may penalise you.

• Don’t include minor words (a, an, the) – They just chew up valuable characters and they distract the web “spiders” (also known as “crawlers” or “robots”) from your keywords.

• Don’t write an English sentence – Remember, people don’t read them. You’re writing for a machine with no aesthetic appreciation. Feed it what it’s looking for – keywords.

For example:
Don’t have a page title that says:
“Welcome to Bella Casa, the prettiest place in town”

Have a page title that says:
“Holiday Cottage Terrigal Holiday Rentals Central Coast”

SEO & Meta Description

The Meta Description is an SEO factor that has been marginalised in recent times but here we discover that not everything we’ve heard is true and the Description tag shouldn’t be neglected. You won’t find the Meta Page Description on the web page but is included in the HTML source code.

All search engines used to display this Description when they delivered up search results. Some search engines still do this, but the conventional wisdom these days is that Google no longer does. We are told that Google will instead grab some content from around the keywords – but my own experiments disprove this.

What’s more, all search engines – including Google – still use the Meta Description when they index a page. It’s not as important as the Meta Title or some other factors, but it will definitely have an effect on your Search Ranking. Consequently, you need to include a Meta Description.

Here are a few rules, guidelines and tips regarding Meta Descriptions:
• Limit yourself to 200 characters (including spaces).
• Make the description rich in keywords – but don’t “overstuff”
• Use the opening paragraph – apparently Google likes the Meta Description to match the opening paragraph of the page and it’s generally a good idea to give Google what it wants.

Here is an example of a Meta Description that includes important keywords:

SEO & Keywords Meta tag

Like the Meta Description, the Keywords Meta tag information doesn’t appear on the page but in the HTML source code.

Originally Search Engines used the Keywords Meta tag in their indexing but this is not now as common and the Keywords Tag isn’t as important as it once was. However, if you want to gain every advantage you can, you’ll include it. Here are some KEYWORD Meta tag tips:

• Limit yourself to 10-12 keywords
• Don’t endlessly repeat the same keywords because the search engines may penalise you for it
• Include common mis-spellings – It’s generally believed that there is no point including keywords in the Keywords Meta tag unless they’ve also appeared on the page. However, it’s also commonly held that you should include common mis-spellings here. Go figure.
• Create page-specific keyword lists – The search engines will discount the relevance of your keywords tag if the same Meta data appears in the same order on every page.

Content search engine robots can read

It is very common now for designers to create a page that looks like it has a lot of keywords but unfortunately the search engine spiders can’t see them. That’s because the words appear in images or in Flash. From an SEO perspective, they may as well not be there. It is vital that you rein your designer in and make your navigation tabs and headings readable by the search engine spiders.

SEO & Site Navigation

When the search engine spiders look at the pages of a website, they are looking for indications as to what it’s all about. The site navigation is one of the things they look at – yet it’s amazing how often this provide no hint at all as to the site’s subject matter. You’ll see terms like “About us”, “Products”, “Services”, “Clients”. These are all generic terms that don’t help the SEO performance. Where possible true to choose navigation that includes keywords to boost your ranking.

SEO shouldn’t be a post-script

This is a timely reminder that SEO is not – or shouldn’t be – an afterthought. It shouldn’t be the last thing you do to a site – but considered from the conceptual level so that site works from beginning to end to enhance your organic search ranking. Some clients don’t rely on search for business but most are like the rest of us – eager to use the net to spread the word far and wide. Ideally SEO should be considered in choosing:

  • Company name
  • Product name
  • Division names
  • Product names
  • Domain names

SEO & <H> Tags

<H> tags have fallen out of favour with designers – but not with search engines so you should be enclosing your headings in hierarchical tags.

<h1>Put your page heading between tags like this</h1>

<h2>Put your secondary headings in tags like this</h2>

And so on …

Why use <H> tags when I can use CSS?

In the early days of the web, people used <H> tags to tell the browser which content they wanted displayed as headings. Search engines then used the <H> tags to form an assessment of what the page was about. So keywords in <H>  tags carried more weight than keywords in body content.

Since the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), designers have tended not to use <H>  tags because they can define their headings purely with CSS – and raw <H>  tags can look ugly. Unfortunately, search engines still rate <H> tags highly, so if you don’t use them you’re missing some SEO potential. A compromise solution is to use <H> tags – but define how they look in CSS.

SEO & Body Content

There is generally a tension between designers who want minimal content and copywriters who want a lot. When it comes to SEO, there is no argument: search engines love content. If you want your site to rate highly in the organic search rankings, you’ll have lots of pages of useful content, and each page will be rich in keywords.

Keyword density – how much is too much?
The simplistic approach is to increase keyword density (i.e. ratio of keywords/total word content) – but beware you can “overstuff” and be penalised by Google. Opinion is divided on maximum keyword density but the general consensus is about 5%. However, using keyword density tools is a waste of time and a good rule of thumb is this: if your keywords are too obvious when you read then your density is too high.

Highlighting

Search engines operate on the basis that if you have highlighted content in some way, it must be a reliable indicator of what the site or page is about. You should use a variety of means – while trying to remain within the bounds of good aesthetic taste – to highlight your keywords. These can include:

• Bullet points
• Bold
• Italics
• Strong
• Use uppercase for the first letter of each word of the keyword phrase
• DON’T USE ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT’S HARD TO READ

SEO & Link building

After the rise of Google, and particularly since its “Florida update” – http://www.webworkshop.net/florida-update.html – your site’s links have played a larger role in determining your search performance. In fact, in a list compiled by a group of industry experts, seven of the top 10 SEO factors involved links.
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors/

The development and execution of a Link strategy is vital if you want to outrank your competitors in organic search. Here are some tips to help you build your link network:

    • Internal links on your site to other elements of your site are useful
    • But not nearly as useful as inbound links from external sites
    • Google will consider the PageRank of the incoming link in determining its quality
    • It will consider the number of other links from the same page – the more links, the less weight it will give to your inbound link
    i.e.. If there is page with a PageRank of 4 and only one outbound link, and a page with a PageRank of 6 but 100 outbound links, the lower ranked page with the single link is likely to be rated higher
    • Try to get the linking site to embed a keyword phrase in the link
    e.g. Rather than “Click here” have “For the best car insurance deals in Australia, click here”
    • This anchor text on inbound links was rated the second most important factor by the group of SEO experts
    • This applies to your internal links as well – make the anchor text keyword rich
    • You can set up reciprocal links between sites – but they won’t be valued as highly as a link going in only direction
    • One of the best ways to get people to create links to your site is by creating compelling content.

Some tips on how to trick search engines

People are always finding new ways to trick Google into ranking their site and their pages more highly. This can lead to short-term gain but almost invariably results in long-term pain. Google makes the rules and if it doesn’t like what you’re doing it can boot your site. The best bet is to try to improve the quality of your site in ways that will genuinely improve its appeal to the people who want your products, services or information. Trying to outsmart Google? That’s plain dumb. Web Copywriter uses ethical SEO.

SEO Tools

Here are just some of the SEO tools that a good SEO copywriter will use in search engine optimising a website to improve its Google search ranking.

How to Search Engine Optimise your website

Search Engine Optimisation is critical but complex. You must do it but it’s a specialised field and it would be a waste of your precious time to do it yourself. The smart thing to do is engage an SEO Copywriter like the Web Copywriter. Contact the Web Copywriter today for your free SEO Report Card