This is a very common question and one which has no easy answer.
Like most people you probably want to get your business website on the first page of Google.
One certain way of doing this is to pay Google to put your site at the top of their search pages for your desired search phrases or key words.
Alternatively, you could use Google Adwords to get your website displayed at the right hand side of the search page.
This also costs money and can be very effective for the right product or service.
However, if you don’t want to pay Google for promoting your site, then your only option is to apply to your website a number of techniques known as “Search Engine Optimisation”, or SEO for short.
Rather than pay an SEO company I decided to learn about SEO and apply these techniques to my own business website www.premitel.com.
I have been reasonably successful and if you search Google for “telecommunications expert edinburgh” or “phone systems edinburgh” then you should see that www.premitel.com is very close to the top for each of these searches.
So how is it done…?
If you are going to take a completely hands-on approach and apply SEO to you own website then you will need some knowledge about how to edit your website pages and have access to your web server either directly or via a content management system like WordPress.
This is beyond the scope of this article.
Please contact Premitel if you want to find out more.
Our aim in this article is to demystify SEO techniques and at the same time provide a better understanding of what an SEO company is offering when they try to sell you their services.
The steps involved in applying SEO are as follows:
Step one: Tell Google about your site
Google will eventually get round to “crawling” and indexing your site, but it is a good idea to assist Google with this process by registering your site using Google’s webmaster tools which are available at this link.
Using Google’s tools you can make sure that Google knows about your site and all its pages.
These tools also allow you to analyse the performance of your site.
Step two: Make sure Google knows what your site is about
Before I started learning about SEO I knew vaguely about keywords and things called meta tags.
These are parts of your website pages that are visible to Google, but not to visitors to your website.
They provide Google with additional information that helps when your site is indexed.
The important areas (or tags) for placing keywords, phrases or descriptions are:
- Domain Name – Ideally your Domain Name should contain the key words for your site, but most businesses tend to have a Domain Name that is short and snappy or is similar to their business name. However, unless people know your business name (eg The BBC or Marks and Spencer) they are unlikely to type it into a Google search. It may be better to have a clumsy looking Domain Name which contains likely Google search terms. For example, the Domain name www.edinburgh-plumber.co.uk is likely to be at the top of any search for edinburgh plumbers simply because it contains the likely search terms “Edinburgh” & “Plumber”
- Title – This is the page Title and should be no more than 60 characters. In normal view the Title is displayed at the top of your browser page. The Title text also appears on the Google page listing so it is important that it reflects accurately the content of your page.
- Description – This is a brief Description of the page content and should be no more than 160 characters. The Google page listing often displays your page Description if it contains the search terms that have been used.
- Keywords – This is where you list the words or phrases that you think might be used as Google search terms. There is no specific recommendation on the number of Keywords, but they should reflect the content of your page and should not include any superfluous words as that may adversely affect your search ranking. Ironically, the Keywords tag has become a less important place to put keywords as Google has progressively downgraded its importance.
It is good practice to have different tags for each page.
For example, you should have a different Title, Description and Keyword list for each page that should reflect the content of that page.
Each page will also need a unique Domain Name and that should also reflect the content of its associated page (eg www.edinburgh-plumber.co.uk/emergency-callout/)
Step 3: Content, Content, Content
We are told that location, location, location are the three most important things to consider when assessing a property.
With a website the most important thing for Google’s assessment is content, content, content.
The content of a website is its text.
Google ignores fancy designs and flash graphics when indexing a web site.
In fact, sometimes these non-text objects can obscure Google’s view of the website with the result that your website is not indexed correctly.
The golden rule is that each page on your web site should contain content that is relevant only to the subject of that page and should contain the keyword terms and phrases that are likely to be used when prospective customers or target visitors are searching for your product or service.
For example, the home page for www.edinburgh-plumber.co.uk should mention that it is a plumbing business located in Edinburgh that provides services to other surrounding areas with these areas mentioned.
The home page should also include mention of the range of services that are offered (eg emergency call out, heating, shower installation etc) together with qualifications and certifications.
Other pages on the site should deal uniquely with each specific product and service offered by the business.
This approach will let Google index the website correctly and ensure that it is given the best possible chance of being on the front page when someone searches for “emergency plumber Edinburgh”
As a minimum for SEO you should apply Steps 1 and 2 described above, but most of your SEO resources should be spent on Step 3 with the focus on getting your content right.
This gives a clue as to why many of the SEO services offered to you will be of limited value.
An SEO business could easily apply Steps 1 and 2, but is unlikely to be able to write the content for your website.
This would require a lot of expensive time gaining an understanding your business and then writing, or re-writing, your website to reflect this.
Step 4: Referrals
Steps 1, 2 & 3 are relatively easy to achieve as they are under your control.
The techniques in these steps on their own should go a long way to moving your website up the Google search rankings.
However, there is one other criteria that Google uses to determine the ranking of your website and that is Referrals from other websites.
Google views Referrals as a measure of your site’s popularity and value.
This explains why the BBC appears at the top of the page when you type “news” into a Google search box.
The BBC website is obviously very popular with many other websites referring to the BBC website by including links to the BBC website on their pages.
Google rates links from other websites as being very important when classifying and categorising websites.
Apart from including your website in as many online directories as possible, the only practical way to get links to your website from other websites is for you to write news articles and features about your business on other websites.
These articles can be in the form of blogs on Twitter or Facebook.
You could also write your own blog on your website and feed it to news aggregation services.
Or you can write articles in trade websites for your business (eg the Chartered Institute of Plumbers and Heating Engineers website http://www.ciphe.org.uk/).
Every article you write should mention your business and should contain a link to your website.
Google will see these links and rank your site higher.
As mentioned above, it is not easy to get referrals from other websites.
It is time consuming and requires discipline to devote a few hours per week or month to write an article and publish it.
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In summary, most SEO companies will be able to assist with Steps 1 and 2.
Some may be able to assist with Step 3, but there are very few that would be able to assist with Step 4.
