Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Basics 1

Even if you plan on hiring a SEO professional, it's a good idea to have a basic understanding of SEO.

Why?

• You need to have realistic expectations about what you would like to achieve.
• If your contracted SEO company uses unethical techniques, it could see your website banned from search engines all together. You need to understand at least a little of what they're up to on your site.
• You need to know if your getting what you are paying for.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and/or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via natural (organic or algorithmic) search results.

Where to start?

Before your start adjusting any pages and targeting keywords there are a few things you should do first.

• You should make sure the code in your site validates to W3C standards (including your CSS). If your site is using non-standard code, its very likely your site may not display properly in some browsers, or worse not at all. I always build sites using standards based html/xhtml and CSS unless there are compelling reasons not to. I also avoid using flash or other elements that require browser plugins.
• Check if your site is using frames. If it is have someone rebuild your site so its not using frames. A website using frames actually loads multiple pages into a single browser window. Frames are simply not search engine friendly. In addition, any traffic that enters your site calling an individual page (rather than the complete frameset), will have difficulty navigating through your site (unless they were lucky enough to load the navigation page). The advantages that frames offer a web designer can be attained using PHP, which is 100% search engine friendly.
• Your site should have a sitemap.html page linked on every other page, and the public_html directory of your website should contain a sitemap.xml file listing all your pages. These help search engines find all your pages, and ensure a higher percentage of indexed pages.
• Plan or implement a regular regime of posting updates to your site. Search engines reward sites that provide fresh relevant content on a regular basis.
• Open an account in Google Webmasters Tools, and verify your site.
• Open an account in Google Analytics and add their code to the web pages you wish to track.
• Learn how to access your server logs or find an administrator that can make monthly reports from your server logs.
• Ensure your webpages use heading and paragraph tags etc within the code. Some web designers will simply make text larger to make a heading. Your page should use proper formatting. Search engines for example give text within a heading tag more weight than text within a paragraph tag, and text within a paragraph tag more weight than unformatted text.

Doing these things or asking your website person to do them will provide your visitors with a trouble free browsing experience, ensuring you get the most out of your SEO activities, also providing you with the tools to gauge it's effectiveness.

In the next issue I will discuss meta-tags and their relationship to other areas of your website text and page titles.

I hope you have found this informative and useful.

Cheers

Wayne Jansson A+ Network+ MCP