SEO – A Three Step Process. Part Two
During step one I discussed how to do some basic research on what terms
your website should be search engine optimised for. Part two covers how to use
those terms in your actual website in order to attract the search engines.
The main thing to remember is that the search engines do not employ
people to critique your website. Instead they send their software robots to
look at the site and capture the information needed to rank your website.
The best way to look at a search engine is that they are detectives
looking for clues. The more clues you leave, the more likely they are to come
up with the correct answers.
So what are these clues and where can you leave them? The clues are the
phrases that you have decided you want to be found for and you can leave them
all over the place including words, images and in the code.
The first three places are in the URL of the website, the description
that shows when you come up in the search results and in the page title at the
top of the page that is showing.
The URL is a great place to start and if you can get what you do in the
URL then do so. If you have a taxi firm in Hull then you are far better naming
your website ‘hull-taxis.co.uk’ than ‘fredstaxies.co.uk’.
The Page Title should have the two or three main phrases you are trying
to optimise for. Do not go over nine words and do not repeat yourself. Using
our Hull taxi example, a good page title might be “Hull Taxis – Hull Taxi Firm
–Cabs in Hull”
The Meta description (the one that shows in the search results) would
use the same words again that you want to be found for. Try to keep this down
to two sentences along the lines of “Hull Taxis. Comfort and punctuality
assured by this Hull Taxi Firm. For the
best cabs in Hull ring xxxxxxxx”
On the page you should also mention these words and in particular as
close to the beginning of the first paragraph as possible.
If you have an image of one of your taxis, get your webmaster to label
it as one of your keywords such as ‘Hull Taxis’. Do the same with you other
images but do not repeat the same term and always label honestly. Do not try to
be too clever with the search engines as this can be counterproductive in the
extreme.
If you get stuck with some of my terms such as Meta description, just
Google it and you will find its simple enough to understand.
In my next article I will be covering the importance to search engine optimisation
of link-building.
