Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) practices
Undoubtedly, the most important aspect of any website is how easy it is to find with various search engine queries. So, now that you know that, how do we go about achieving this?
Before we begin, it is worth noting that many websites and companies offer Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services that promise "instant top results", "permanent top rankings" or "submission to 200,000 search engines and directories" are most likely scammers. The reality is, the process is not that simple; and it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to ensure your site achieves good search engine positioning.
Good search engine optimization practices
We will explain some of the most important practices in search engine promotion without going into too many technicalities, as we will discuss this in more detail with you when we receive your enquiry.
The title tag
This is, quite simply, the most important element of your website. It's a piece of HTML code that describes the content of each of your web pages. You can view it at the immediate top-left of your web browser. It is vital to have your most important keyword phrases (the phrases by which your customers find your website, when entering them in Google, for example) in your title, that reflect the main content of that page. The 2 examples that follow are bad, and should be avoided.
Welcome to my company
Or simply:
Home
It may make sense to the human visitor to this website, but when the search engines index your site, "welcome to business x" or "home" means absolutely nothing to them and as such, you will be ranked lower.
Our tried and tested method we favour can be seen below:
Document title | Section of website | Site or company name
As it stands, that really isn't meaningful so lets put it into practice. Lets say your business is a hair salon in the Bournemouth area called Hair Raiser, for examples sake. An effective title would be:
Human hair extensions in Bournemouth, Dorset | Hair services | Hair Raiser
See how this example is a lot more meaningful to both you and a robot crawling a web page?
Writing unique, meaningful content
Before we established that the page title was the most important element for good search engine visibility. However, good content is also essential to increase your site traffic and sales. So, how does one write meaningful content?
- Be concise - people visiting very specific or niche sites will often have a goal in mind or don't have much time. Therefore, try to use meaningful headings in bold (to stand out) if they're scanning or skimming your website content.
- Know your audience - Ensure your content is easy to understand for the type of people who use your website.
- Be educational - as mentioned before, if your website is very subject-specific, write your content to educate aswell as to entertain.
- Ensure link text is meaningful - a mistake that seems to be as popular as it was in the 90s is to use pointless text for links e.g. if I wanted to create a link to our website design portfolio I could do the following..
To see our web design portfolio click here
If you're skim-reading or scanning a web page, clicking the word here confuses users and makes for bad website usability. So what would be the better solution?
View our full website portfolio by clicking here.
This way, your site visitors are fully aware of what link they are clicking, even if they are scanning through a web page.