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Our aim here is to provide simple answers to some of the most common questions being raised by small business owners about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Our approach is to keep this page constantly updated, adding the latest and most relevant information from the most credible sources as it becomes available to us at OzeClick.
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making a web page highly relevant for certain key words or phrases. Successful Search Engine Optimisation helps a web page gain top positioning on spider-based search engines like Google for the optimised words and phrases.
The above definition is roughly the average of all most commonly used definitions on the Web. The aim of SEO in simple terms is to get visitors to your web pages through search engines by making the content of your web pages relevant to people’s searches. The key word here is “content” – the text on each of your web page(s).
There is a lot more to SEO than the simple definition above. In order to understand why some sites do better than others we need to answer some key questions.
How do I monitor results?
This is probably the most important question, because unless you can monitor the performance of your SEO, there’s no point doing anything. Like with any marketing exercise, monitoring results is crucial.
The best way to monitor the performance of your SEO is by checking your site stats. Good hosting should always come with a comprehensive website statistical package (or stats). Note, when checking your stats, the best traffic indicator is “Unique Visitors”. This will show you how many individual people visited your site (any one of your pages) in any one day. Most stats packages will have a month-by-month graph, and then full details and a daily graph for each of the months gone by, including the current month.
Looking at the details of the current month, for example, there should be a section that records the “referrers” of traffic. This is very important information as it tells you where your visitors are coming from. Most will enter your site directly by typing your site’s URL into the Browser’s Address Bar – this actually doesn’t tell you much, because some people’s browsers block stats from collecting referrer information. Others however will reveal what web pages most visitors are coming from. Amongst these will be the search engines. Here’s an example from our own website for a month in the past:
[Oct 2004 usage – referrers – coming soon]
We find that Google is by far the greatest contributor of traffic to our site. For this reason we focus most of our efforts on Google.
The second most important information in your stats is “Search Strings” or “Key Words”. This gives you an indication of the best performing key words and phrases that people are using to find your site. Here’s an example from our own website for the same month as the example above.
[Oct 2004 usage – search words – coming soon]
In monitoring the performance of your SEO it’s important to note that whatever changes you make to your web page(s) today will take a week or two (sometimes longer) to show up in your stats. Often it is a case of making changes, then waiting to see the results. If the results are positive then you know you are going in the right direction.
Another way of monitoring the performance of your SEO efforts is to check your site’s positioning and other key performance indicators in a search engine like Google (including PageRank - explained further down). These techniques are not as reliable as stats because they are not direct indicators of traffic to your site. For example if a web page comes up first in Google for a particular set of key words it does not automatically mean lots of traffic. It is also not a measurable indicator, like the number of visitors.
An important thing to note here is that the aim of SEO should be to increase traffic, not to get to the top of Google. The two are not always related. And, although it’s nice to see your site appear on the first page of Google for some key words, this is not a direct indication of how many visitors will come to your site.
How does a search engine like Google work?
Most of the major search engines like Google collect their information simply by browsing the web. Unlike people, they see the web pages as code. They analyse the code of each page and based on a complex algorithm compile the information into databases. More algorithms are used to retrieve the information in a particular order when a search is performed. All these storing and retrieving algorithms are written with the particular search engine’s goal in mind (see Google’s goal below). It’s about delivering meaningful results. Here is some basic information on Google: http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/1.html#A1 and here is a more technical overview: http://www.google.com.au/corporate/tech.html. See also the question about “PageRank” below.
It is not necessary to submit your web pages to search engines like Google, as long as there is a link to them on the internet.
With regards to SEO, here are some guidelines published by Google: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html as well as http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html. Anything and everything published by Google is worth printing out and reading. This search engine is our main focus – knowing what it does and how it does it is key to SEO, and there’s no better way of getting this information than from the horse’s mouth.
Search engines change their algorithms all the time to try and make their search results more meaningful to users. Their biggest obstacles are people who try to cheat their systems using various techniques. Take a look at what Google have to say about it: http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
What’s involved in Search Engine Optimisation?
One way to look at Search Engine Optimisation is to think about the goals of search engines like Google. Here’s Google’s goal:
Google's mission is "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful.” (Google, http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/profile.html)
Aligning our website with the goals of search engines allows us to bypass a lot of technical detail and aim straight for the target. In simple terms it’s about giving the search engines what they need. In the case of Google, it’s all about organizing information and making it accessible and useful. If your website can help with that, then Google is interested. But isn’t that what a good website should do anyway?
Looking at it this way, the target of SEO is no longer the search engines themselves but the end customers, the searchers (visitors or web users). Going straight to the target, we can bypass the technicalities and focus on the key aim. If we can satisfy the end customer, then we will have satisfied Google’s goal. With this in mind, it’s easy to see why some websites are always ranked higher than others on Google – they simply deliver “useful” information, that is well organised. They meet Google’s objectives.
Even Google says, “Make pages for users, not for search engines” (Google, http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html).
Here are some of the key steps to get started. We’ll update these from time to time, so check back when you feel like it.
- The first step of SEO is ensuring good site structure “with a clear hierarchy” (Google, http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html). This involves making sure that all your pages are linked and are able to be reached by visitors and search engines in a logical manner. Simple and clear navigation structure is vital to this.
- Use basic text and images on your site. “If fancy features such as Javascript, cookies, session ID's, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.” (Google, http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html).
- Keep your content fresh. Update your text at least every two weeks – that’s approximately how often Google will visit your site. If Google finds content that remains the same for a long time, it may consider the site to be “stale”. Think of your visitors – do you think they would be interested in finding the same content all the time? While there is a constant supply of new users on the internet, search engines like Google are very much focused on repeat traffic, and so must we if we want to meet Google’s goals.
- Make your content worthy of a referral. This simply means placing some content on your site which is interesting enough for people to talk about it to others and to refer others to your site. For example, the aim of this article is to create content that is interesting enough for people to tell others and perhaps even to link to it. How did you locate this website? If you found this article through Google, then our aim has been somewhat achieved.
This is probably the most important part of SEO and is where most efforts should be directed. Some ideas may include:
o How To Guide
o Frequently Asked Questions
o Industry Standards
o Help Tips
o Expert Advice
o Free Articles
o Monthly Newsletters
o Local Guide
o Blog (click here for a great article on Business Blogs)
The more frequently you update your content the more attractive it will become.
- Come up with a strategy for exchanging links. This will help to build your “PageRank” (see below). For example, for an accommodation website it may be ideal to have information about restaurants in the local area. You could contact a few and exchange links with them. In order to link to each restaurant you might set up a special “links” page or call it “Local Restaurants”. To take it further you could even have a “Local Guide” with some kind of ratings and comments about the services provided.
Every link to your site is worth a small fortune, so the effort you put in will be paid off. Note, in contacting these people it’s best to use the phone rather than email, because it may be classed as unsolicited mail (or spam), which is illegal.
- Think about what key words people might use to find a particular product or service that you provide. Try to incorporate these key words in your content. Also remember, that for key words that are popular, like “accommodation” it will be much harder to get to a higher position on search engines. You may need to first build up your “PageRank” (see below) before you compete for such words.
For targeting of specific key words it is recommended to include these key words in the title of the page and also in the “description” and “keywords” meta tags (in Site Editor these are in the Page Properties). Note, don’t overdo it – a title should still look like a title, and Google takes that into account.
One thing to note here is that you don’t need to put too much effort on key words. You will achieve results (in terms of visitors) on a very wide range of words that are simply in your content. For example, in a month you may only get 2-3 visitors per set of unusual key words (some that you didn’t even expect), but there may be hundreds of such combinations, resulting in 200-300 visitors. Spending all your effort on just one or two specific phrases may result in 10-20 visitors for each, but that’s only a total of 20-40 visitors overall (although perhaps better targeted).
- Experiment and monitor your results. Try different things – your site can be as dynamic as you like. Often the more dynamic, the better. As you try out something on one page, try something else on another. Remember, each page is independent of all the others, so you can try many things at once on different pages.
The most important thing is to monitor the results in your stats. Once you know something is working for you, keep going down that path.
Should I pay an SEO company to do it for me?
“Be wary of SEO firms” (Google, http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html) – some will take you for a ride and charge you for a whole lot of advice that will result in very little extra traffic.
I have come across many SEO “specialists” who place far too much emphasis on small detail, for example such as having specific key words in the URL, changing the names of files or even encouraging registering a domain with the key words in it. While it’s great to have a domain name with the key words in it, it will do very little towards getting more traffic from search engines. To me, these are simply ways for charging you extra money.
For example, search for some key words like "sydney events" in Google (http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2005-17%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=sydney+events&meta=). Two of the entries (ranked 4 & 5):
"Rank 4. Sydney and regional NSW accommodation, attractions, tours and eventsTourism NSW - Official tourism site for Sydney and New South Wales accommodation, attractions, tours and events.
www.visitnsw.com/ - 51k - Cached - Similar pages"
"Rank 5. Things to Do Upcoming Festivals and Events in SydneyUpcoming Festivals and Events in Sydney - From Chinatown to Circular Quay, the central business district CBD is filled with things to do and see.
www.sydney-australia.biz/events/ - 48k - Cached - Similar pages"
As you can see the second one has key words in the URL, while the first one doesn't. So why does it rank lower? The opposite can also be true. Often they may seem to rank better with key words in the URL but that is not the cause of it.
If you have money to spend in this area, it’s probably better spent on obtaining good content on a regular basis such as hiring a good writer. If you must use an SEO “specialist”, make sure you read Google’s guidelines on this issue: http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html.
Here are some basic guidelines that are a good idea to follow if you do decide to use a SEO "specialist". They are very similar to those published by Google.
- Know exactly what you are paying for. Don't pay for something you don't quite understand or know exactly how it works.
- If there is a setup cost involved, know exactly what that involves, who will do the work and how many hours it will take. Commonly it may involve inserting some HTML code into your web pages. This doesn't take a genius and should only take a few minutes. If the work involves major structural changes to the site, such as converting a frame-based site to a non-frames one, you should be asking for a brief project plan or quote that outlines every hour spent.
- If there is a monthly cost involved, you also need to know where that money goes. If it goes into some clever technology that does something like "cloaking", "mirroring", "shadowing", "doorway pages", etc - the advice is simple:- walk away. Take Google's word for it (http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html).
- If the monthly cost involves someone doing something on a regular basis, make sure every hour is accounted for. Know what you are paying for.
- Performance should be based on the results shown in your Stats, or ultimately in your sales figures. Remember that a good ranking on Google doesn't always mean good results.
- As Google suggests, "make sure you're protected legally" (http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html). Ask for a 100% money-back guarantee, while remembering that the effects (positive or negative) of Search Engine Optimisation may not be felt for many months.
- Read Google's guidelines (http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html).
What is PageRank and how does it affect your web page?
“PageRank is the importance Google assigns to a page based on an automatic calculation that factors in the link structure of the web and many other variables.” (Google, http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/?quick=toolbarbuttons) In other words, Google uses a complex formula or algorithm to determine the order in which sites are listed in search results and one of it’s key variables is PageRank. Google determines the value of PageRank by yet another complex formula that takes into account how many links point to that page. It’s a bit like voting. Here’s how Google explains it: http://www.google.com/technology/index.html
The formula is Google’s biggest secret and, most importantly, it is always changing and evolving. Many people spend a lot of time trying to determine what the formula might look like. Just as they might be getting close, it would change and they’re back at the drawing board. While it helps to understand how the formula works, to me it seems far more important to understand what the formula is trying to achieve. We know that “Google's mission is to deliver the best search experience on the Internet by making the world's information universally accessible and useful.” (Google, http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/profile.html) From that we can deduce that Google’s formula will aim to achieve the best user experience by making information useful and accessible. If we aim for that, then there is no need to know how the formula works.
If you want to see the PageRank of a particular page (on a scale of 0-10), then you need to download and install the Google Toolbar: http://toolbar.google.com/. You will also need to allow Google to collect non-identifiable information from you (during installation) in order to enable the PageRank. Keeping an eye on the PageRank of your own web pages and comparing them to pages of other websites is a great way to get a feel for what Google considers “useful” out there.
All new pages begin with a PageRank of 0. Often this simply means that Google hasn’t found that page yet or hasn't ranked it. If there are no links leading to this page, then it is likely to remain at 0. Yahoo Home page has a PageRank of 10 (http://www.yahoo.com). As I publish this article on this page, the initial PageRank is 0. I’ll keep an eye on the PageRank of this page, and as it changes I will update it here:
- 1 Mar 2005 – PageRank: 0
- 21 April 2005 - PageRank: 4 (same as most sections on this site other than the Home page)
- 31 April 2006 - PageRank: 2 (Note, I have not updated this page for a year! Perhaps this is why the PageRank has gone down.)
Let’s see how useful this page becomes over time! I will also contribute stats data related to this page from time to time, including number of unique visitors to this page and where they originate. I may also show the kinds of key words that are showing up in the stats, indicating the sorts of phrases that are bringing people to this page.
Notes:
- From the sites that we are building at OzeClick, we are noticing a trend: Sites that are constantly being updated and that are dynamic seem to receive greater traffic from search engines (based on their Key Word Stats); Sites that remain constant in their content drop off in their stats.
- It took almost 2 months to go from a PageRank of 0 at the time of publication to a PageRank of 4. This is the same PageRank as most of our other key sections in the navigation, apart from the Home page, which has a PageRank of 5. (24 Apr 2005)
- Examining the PageRank of the selected "featured" sites that we have built over the last 2 years (click here to view the list), a trend is noticeable: Most sites created within the last 2-3 months have a PageRank of 0; Most sites that are 4-6 months old have a page rank of 4; and most sites older than 6 months have a page rank of 2 to 4, with PageRank of 2 being most common. This would seem that the initial PageRank of 4 is not related to popularity, but is rather a starting point for all new sites that Google locates. From that point on, PageRank either remains the same, goes up or comes down. It's interesting to note that nearly every site older than one year has a PageRank of 2. However, one site has a Home page with a PageRank of 5! That site is Opal Plus (http://www.opalplus.com/welcome/page1.php). Notice the Links section on that site also has a PageRank of 5. (24 Apr 2005)
So how does PageRank affect your web page? Simply put, if there are two identical pages on the web, the one with a higher PageRank will, on average, rank higher in search results on Google. When I say “on average”, I mean that there may be other factors at play in the secret formula, like “Topic-Sensitive PageRank” (seochat.com – “Google PageRank Formula: Changes Over Time - The Introduction of Topic Sensitive PageRank”, http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/Google-PageRank-Formula-Changes-Over-Time/3/). To me these are technical details, and while they’re nice to know, let’s not lose sight of the key driving factor – Google’s goal. All the mathematics are simply there to help achieve this goal. |
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