Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

That’s where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes in and it's a lucrative business these days. SEO, to put it very simply, is the process of making your site easier for the various search engines to index. While you can pay someone to do SEO for you, it's costly and they may not be able to guarantee you results. So we have put together a few SEO guidelines to bear in mind, when you are building and editing your website.

First off, SEO is not easy.  There are no magic formulas and it is a long-term goal, because the web is dynamic and always changing. 

1. Ensure that your website is accessible

There has to be enough content (text, images, video, blog etc.) on the pages of your site for the search engines to index. Your site must also be easy to use. Airsquare’s layout and sitemaps help with accessibility, but it’s up to you to make your content easy to understand and useful. Also, if you have a lot of ‘Adobe Flash’ on your site, you will need to ensure that you have some relevant text around it, to give the search engines something to ‘grab on to’.

2. Choose keywords/topics for your site

While keywords are no longer a major focus for SEO, they are worth considering. Keywords are words that people might type in to search engines, when they are searching for the services that your website offers. People tend to use several words/phrases in their searches, so try to think of some phrases too (i.e. longtail keywords).  Google AdWords is a paid service from Google that allows you to test the keywords that you think are relevant to your site and collect data about which ones are effective (see number 10 in this list).

Use your keywords consistently in your site content, your blog articles and your social media updates. Put a keyword in the title tag on every page of your site (this is easy to do on Airsquare, just go to Page > Settings). Use keywords in your URL: all of your site's URL’s can be found and indexed by the search engines. A URL is the information that shows in your browser’s address bar when you are on a certain page of your site. Airsquare makes sure that your site’s URL is easy for search engines to index and you can also edit the URL, by going to Page > Settings.

3. Good quality content

Search engines are getting better at gauging the quality of sites, sifting out those that have focused solely on using keywords/external links, and don’t actually contain useful information.

Airsquare optimises the layout of your site, but you control the content: Your images, text and blog should be up-to-date, relevant and useful. Regularly updating the text and content on your site makes it more likely to be found by the search engines. Good content means popularity, which, in turn, helps your search engine ranking.

You can choose to exclude less important pages from being indexed by search engines, by indicating how important the page is and how often it changes (in Airsquare, go to Page > Settings > How important is this page?).

4. Usability

People need to find what they are looking for on your website quickly and easily, or they will leave it. So, it’s very important that your website is user-friendly. Ask friends of friends and/or potential customers to take a look at your website and get their feedback. You can use programmes like feedbackarmy.com, usertesting.com, fivesecondtest.com to check usability too.

5. Social media

Social media is a great way of connecting with people, getting people talking about your business and improving your SEO.  Get savvy with Twitter, Facebook, Google+ (or all three!) and set up an account for your business, complete with your logo.  

Keep your social media pages up-to-date and active, or they'll become a liability rather than an asset. 

Check out this cool 'social media cheat sheet' from Flowtown.com to give you some ideas.

With regard to Twitter, choose your username wisely. Your username and your Twitter bio should include a few of your business keywords. On your site you should link to your Twitter profile on each page and get as many followers as you can by keeping your tweets interesting and on topic. See http://business.twitter.com for more information. 

You can also find more social media business tips in Airsquare's useful guide to Twitter and Facebook.

6. Blog

Posting a blog on your website is good for SEO: an up-to-date blog generates fresh content that the search engines love. Post informative blog articles, videos, podcasts, newsletters etc. that are relevant to your customers. Airsquare enables you to put a commenting function on your blog, so that you can engage with your customers. It's also useful to comment on other people's blogs (if they are relevant and useful!), adding a link to your site to your comment. 

7. Link building

It's good to have people link to your business website from their sites. It’s best to let this happen organically and gradually, in order for the links to be good quality; a good way to encourage more links is through your social media and marketing. Ask your business contacts and customers to link to your website from their business websites, blog or social media pages.

8. Listings in local directories

This is obviously a good idea if your business is confined geographically, e.g. if customers need to come to your offices for a service. If this is the case, sign up for ‘Google places’. In Airsquare, go to Settings > APIs and enter your Google maps API key (we’ve added a link to Google maps if you haven’t already registered for this). 

There are a number of online directories which have free listing options: e.g. Hotfrog, Yellow, Finda. 

9. Google Analytics

Google analytics is a free tool that allows you to evaluate how your keywords are working: which ones are people using to find your site? 

Google analytics will give you information about which pages and links on your site are being used the most - are people finding the right pages and if not, how can you change this? You can also evaluate the effects on user numbers, of any marketing campaigns or changes that you have made to your site.

Given that Google analytics is free and can give you so much information, it's worth having a look at.

Sign up for Google analytics to get an account number. To apply it to your website on Airsquare, go to Settings > Tracking and add in your account number, in order to enable tracking of your site visitors.

Sign up for Webmaster tools by going to Settings > Webmaster; click on the link to go to Google Webmaster if you haven't already signed up with them.

10. Online ads

Online ads, while annoying, can help to increase awareness of your site. An example is Google AdWords. The idea is to create ads, using your business keywords: When people use one of your keywords to search on Google, your ad may appear next to their search results. You set your budget and 'pay per clicks', i.e. you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. You can also edit your ad and your budget until you get the results you want. 

The key with Google AdWords is choosing the right keywords and evaluating this often. Google AdWords can do a lot to enhance your SEO campaign, in a controlled way, so it’s worth going down this route if you have some money in the budget for advertising. See http://adwords.google.com for more information.

Another option for online ads is Facebook advertising. Facebook has a huge following (something like 750 million) - quite the captive audience! You control how much you spend on the ad and you can choose the pay per click option. Additionally, you can control the age, location and interests of your target audience. Visit www.facebook.com/business for more information.

To conclude, the main thing to remember is that “ Mostly, good web design and content go a long way toward good SEO” (Colleen Jones, p. 6, Clout).

You get out what you put in.

Suggested Reading:

References

1. 1stwebdesigner graphic and web design blog: ‘The secret of using keywords to boost search engine ranking’ by Salman Saeed.
2. Hubspot’s Inbound marketing Blog: ‘7 SEO Twitter tips to rank better in search’ by Pamela Vaughan and ‘6 Killer SEO copywriting tips from @Copyblogger’ by David Wells
3. www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seo-checklist-for-new-sites-whiteboard-friday.
4. ‘Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content’, by Colleen Jones, (New Riders publishers) 2011