Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This page is concerned with organic SEO. This is a means of getting your website to appear at a good position in search engines like google.com, google.co.uk, bing.com and yahoo.com.Without paying Google, Yahoo or Bing.com any money. Though unless you can do it yourself you will have to pay the SEO guy or lady.

What is the Internet

The internet is a network of computers which store and retrieve (serve) websites or web apps. Some of the computers are designed for that purpose and they are called web servers. Some are normal computers that run software that turns a PC into a web server. The internet is searched for: specific information, websites or apps by search engines, which include google.com, yahoo.com , bing.com and more.

What is a Search Engine

A search engine catalogues all the websites on the internet so people can look them up. This means that for similar businesses there is a lot of competition, which also means: unless your website is well prepared (or optimised) for search engines then your business will appear, on the 20th page of Google, whereas other businesses are appearing on the: first, second or third page of Google.

Regions

If your business is 1 of 10 in the region you want to appear in, you stand a better chance of appearing on the first page of Google than if your business is 1 of 100 in the area.

If the people in the region of 100 businesses like yours, have websites, with poor search engine optimisation, you stand a better chance of appearing higher if your business has better SEO. If your business is 1 of 50 in the same area with very good search engine optimisers, working for all your competitors, you stand a lesser chance of appearing higher.

Two Means of SEO

There are two means of SEO which are paid for and organic. Organic listings look like this picture:

The organic listings tend to be bigger and do not have the word “Ad” next to them in a green rectangle. It is harder to make an organic lister appear on the first page of Google than it is a paid for Google ad. However once an organic ad appears on the first page of google, it can be clicked on as many times as you want for nothing. However with a paid listing you have to pay google £2 or more every time the ad is clicked on

Paid for Ads (Adwords)

 

Ads have the word “ad” on them or sponsored at the top of the column on which they appear.

A new phenomenon is the pictures with ads which are under the column sponsored. You can also get map ads.

Google My Business

The picture on the right is that of Southsea Inks it was created by having a Google email login in and entering a console on this link: https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/business/

Google my business is like a mini website on Google linked to Google maps. The more reviews you get on it the higher up you appear on: google maps business search. It's a very powerful tool in getting more trade when combined with a website.

Search Engine Listings

Appearing in search results is not an immediate process. In the first 6 months the most work has to be done on organic search. So if you want results straight away , you will have to use paid for social media ads. The position you first appear in the organic search, is a bit unpredictable. It will improve as your website spends more time on the internet, good and relevant search engine work, will also improve your chances of being found.

The benefit of organic search is you don’t have to pay Google anything and people can still find you. It does depend on a number of things including code on the website and how relevant the website is to what you are selling.

There are three main ways of ranking higher in organic search which are through: code, content and backlinks. The following section explains this.

Code

Title Tag

In html a tag is a block of code. Title tags contain what is seen on the search results like in the above picture the "Title" tag for Southsea Inks contains the words.

Ink Toner stationery Computer Repairs Southsea

Description Tag

The description should go into more depth like: business type/name location and brief services. Or other words that will emphasise the keywords in the title tag. The description tag should go immediately after the title tag. It is what people read your website is about before clicking to go onto it.

The description tag for Southsea Inks contains the words:

“We Sell new and recycled Ink and Toner, stationery, Repair computers and Laptops and do mobile phone screen replacements. Student Discount of 10%.”

Content

Content is important Google uses automated reading of images of graphics to rank websites. The more relevant the business is to a customer looking for a product or wanting to know more about a product, then the higher it will rank. Recently it has become necessary for a website to be an authority on the products and services to rank well in organic search results.

Directories

Another means of improving your website listing on search engines is using directories. Directories store the details of different services much like yell.com and thompson.com. Some of the listings are free and some are paid for. If you pay some directories, they will call you up with customers that want to use your service, (they usually have a free trial period where you can get customers for free). If you have a free listing, you can usually include a link pointing to your website on it; having links pointing to your website increases your rank in Google, Yahoo and Bing, also customers that use the directory will come to you.

Back Links

Directories are good for creating links back to your website this is part of offsite SEO. Unfortunately if a company has 10 or more job adverts on in Indeed, and is listed in the same directories as you, then it will be very hard to compete with them.