What is Search Engine Optimisation SEO How It Makes Money

Search Engine Optimisation is the art of enhancing your website to improve it’s ranking (position) on the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

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…..