For a company that relies on new business opportunities (and that includes most of us) and attempts to gain some of those opportunities through their website, Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO for short) is an essential tool.

SEO is comprised of on-page optimisation and off-page optimisation, however, one thing is true and that is that there is no single solution for getting a front page ranking rather SEO comprises a range of different techniques and strategies both initially and over the entire lifetime of your website.

On Page Search Engine Optimisation

On Page SEO comprises all the things you must do from a site development perspective when building or updating your website.

On page optimisation is common in professionally developed sites, however is partially or completely overlooked by amateur or home developed sites.

Good On-page SEO will enhance your website’s Search Engine Result Placement (SERP) and move your site closer to that elusive front page placing.

Keywords – Why Are They So Important

Keywords are simply the terms that a potential customer enters into Google, Yahoo, MSN or other search engines to find web pages that may meet their requirements.

If I am looking to buy a new watch online I might enter ‘watch’ or, if I am looking for a bargain I might type in ‘low cost watch’.

Similarly if I am looking for a diver’s watch I might enter ‘diver’s watch’ or ‘divers watch’ or ‘water proof watch’ or ‘low cost waterproof watch’.

If I want to inspect the watch before purchase I may even refine that search to retailers in my local area e.g. ‘watch diver Manhattan’ or, because spelling was not my best subject at school I might even enter ‘divers watch Manhatten’.

If I am a watch retailer in Manhattan and I want to get the chance to make this sale the first thing I must do in the development of my website is to make sure my site has been tuned to give it the best chance of a high SERP (first few entries if possible) for the term (keyword) ‘divers watch Manhattan’. If that keyword or a close variation is not on my site then the chances are that the site will not be returned in the customer’s search results and I will lose this sale to a more savvy competitor.

Keywords legitemise your website. They tell the search engine that your site contains content that is relevant to specific searches.

What Can I Do to Optimise My Website ?

The first thing to do is to spend some time working out your keywords. This is the first and most most important step.

For a small business it is important to chose your keywords wisely. In the above example it would be very difficult for a small retailer to get a high ranking for the term ‘divers watch’ or ‘watch’ as many companies are competiting to rank highly for those keywords.

If I am located in Manhattan, however, defining one of my keywords as ‘divers watch Manhattan’ is a much less competitive phrase and I may be more likely to gain a higher SERP for that term. Likewise ‘watch Manhattan lower east side’ (known as a long tail keyword due to the length of the phrase) would be far more likely to get my business a very high SERP for a customer who entered a like or similar phrase in their quest for that elusive divers watch.

Your keywords must be placed in areas on your site that a search engine considers important.

Your main keyword or keyword phrase must appear in your title tag. This is essential. This tag is the page title and it tells a search engine what the main theme of each page is. The page title is also returned as the heading for your page in a Google search. It also shows up on the tab on your web browser.

Keywords should also appear in your meta description tag. The meta description appears under the page title when Google returns the results from a search. It provides, surprisingly enough, a description of the web page.

There is also a meta keywords tag, however, there is much conjecture that this tag is no longer so important for the major search engines, although most people still populate the tage with a variety of keywords to be safe.

That is all for part one of this article – watch for part 2 in coming weeks where we do more work on on-page optimisation…..

Content is King !

So why have I gone to such great lengths to state the obvious and even repeat the obvious ?

Because so few of us get that’s why !

The guys that develop the algorithms that create the spiders that trawl the web and decide where to position your site in the return from a potential purchaser’s search for your goods and services know it too.

Their job is to make sure that they return the best possible responses to that potential purchaser and the best responses get to go on page one and, of course, those are the links that get all the traffic.

What Is A Search Engine Interested In ?

So what is a search engine interested in (apart from making money of course) ?

A search engine such as Google needs to maintain its leadership as the premium search engine (and hence the most lucrative) by ensuring that it consistently returns higher and higher quality results for any given search.

The best way to achieve that is to return the sites and webpages that provide the most relevant information – content is king !

Now we are all aware that a good web developer will enhance your site to ensure it is search engine friendly via the arts of Search Engine Optimisation, however, there is only so much they can do. The rest is up to you !

We Are All Experts In Our Field&lt

During my time as a management consultant and web developer I have noted that every person I have done business with is an expert in their field. Be it beds, real estate, doors, artwork etc. They all know their stuff and are keen to communicate that knowledge to potential clients.

Trying to get that information out of them to place on a website, however, is rarely an easy exercise. People find it hard to write what they so easily can put into words during a conversation or a sales pitch.

I am yet to meet a client who does not want their website to feature on the first page of a Google search for their particular keyword yet suggesting that they need to continue to add relevant content to their website weekly (as a minimum) gains the sort of silence that Hannibal Lecter must get when he suggests that you join him for a cosy late night snack.

The problem is that most people still equate a website with a brochure. We work together, I go away and build the site and then they provide me with small changes every so often to make sure that the products shown are still available for sale. Then, once a year, we change the site a bit to give it a new fresh look.

The Consultative Sell

We are all aware that the consultative sell is the best sales method. You know your product nd your industry and you work with the client to understand their particular situation and requirements and then you match a particular solution to those requirements, negotiate the price and then complete the sale.

As long as you weren’t lying about the capabilities of your product or solution and, if you provide good service, then likely the client will return to you next time for their next purchase either for a replacement product or for a new product perhaps.

Not only that, the client will likely speak highly about your company’s knowledge and capabilities to their friends, work colleagues etc and you may even get referral business from the sale.

Well these days people often do their window shopping on the Internet so you need to translate the consultative sale to your website. You need to position yourself as the expert, the best one to go to first and you will be unlikely to do that with an online brochure that cannot be found because it is returned on page 10 of a Google search.

The Goalposts Have Moved

The goalposts have moved. Once we said you needed a website to remain competitive. The website you need today is not just an online brochure. You must engage (and continue to engage) with potential clients via your site.

Content is king ! Not just the content you enter today but the content you enter tomorrow and the next day and the next………..

WordPress can bring benefits to your Search Engine ranking

WordPress is a next generation Internet promotion and content management tool that empowers you to better control how you promote your business online and your return on investment.

WordPress started in 2003 and then since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day

WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it as you read this which is more than most commercial platforms.

So isn’t blogging for nerds with way too much time on their hands or for people to post pictures on the Internet of their cat or to tell you what happened during their holidays ?

Well, no doubt, nerds do blog and you can find thousands of cute pet pics as well as personal diaries, however, the power and unique advantages of WordPress have also been harnessed by small, medium and large business and even huge corporates to quickly, accurately and inexpensively communicate their message to clients, prospects, employees and the general public.

Corporate WordPress users include CNN, The New York Times, Yahoo, Southwest Airlines, CNet, Flickr, Harvard, NASA, Xerox, The US Post Office Ford, Dell, Intel, Nike…… the list is endless and growing.

So what are some of the benefits to your business that accrue from using WordPress:-

Search Engine Optimisation – How to Get More Business

Search Engines e.g. Google, Yahoo, NineMSN etc have to be considered when building a commercial website. It’s no use having the best looking website in the world if it comes in on the tenth page of a search by a potential site visitor through Google. The chances are your site will rarely be seen and will result in little additional business.

Search Engines like to see relevant content that is updated regularly. WordPress provides you with a platform that allows you to quickly set up your site’s content, manage the content and <em>update the content in real time yourself WITHOUT having to rely on your web developer</em>.

WordPress also incorporates functionality which makes it search engine friendly. Sending pings to other sites, creating search engine friendly URLs, managing content in categories and archives, the ability to tag posts and the use of relevant page titles, headers, bold and empasized text.

Whilst WordPress doesn’t solve all your SEO challenges it certainly deals with many of them efficiently.

Update Your Website Yourself – Quicker and More Cost Effective Support

We all understand that our priorities may not always match with those of our service suppliers. Your business may need an important piece of information or a promotion posted on your site today, however, your web developer may only be able to modify your site within the next 48 hours at best.

WordPress allows you and your staff to change content on your site in real time via the use of a simple text editor. Images and other media can also be uploaded to your site via a simple interface to enhance your message.

Whilst you cannot change everything on your site through WordPress it is unlikely that you want to do more than update existing information or to add new content on a regular basis.

WordPress empowers you to manage your own website whilst saving you considerable time and potential cost by doing it yourself.
Standards Compliant – Your Best Product Warranty

WordPress follows web standards. It utilises modern concepts such as Cascading Style Sheets to allow you to quickly update the look and feel of your site from year to year without having to go to the expense of costly re-writes.

And because WordPress is standards based your site can be quickly migrated to different hosts or web development service providers should the need arise.

The Future of WordPress

As stated at the top of this article, WordPress is an open source community project. There are hundreds of developers lending their time to enhance the WordPress platform and thousands of developers contributing new themes.

The product will continue to be enhanced and new features and functionality are continually made available to the community either for a small contribution to the developer or, in many cases, for no cost at all.

And, yes, this site is a WordPress site and this article was of course created in WordPress…..