As a web developer we come across many people waving an SEO banner. Unfortunately it is still a bit of a dark art, though perfectly legitimate business there are many people selling SEO services that do not provide business real value.
We had one such conversation recently with one of our clients. They had bought some SEO services from a company that found their website and contacted them from cold. Usually they consult us when taking on new deals that are on the web, just for reassurance as they are quite new to it. However on this one occasion they said that this particular sells person was very attractive and it really didn't matter what it was they were selling, they were ready to sign!
They had signed up for a year. Luckily the client did have tools at their disposal to measure the value of this purchase when the renewal time came around. By using google analytics they were able to see within about 5 minutes that their deal, which cost around £1000 for the year, had got them one customer that made a purchase of about £10. As most business savy types will tell you. This is not a great return on investment. This particular client is very approachable and was kind enough to invite the sales person back to talk about these results. Needless to say they didn't show up. By the way, if you don't have google analytics on your site it is completely free, very easy to integrate into your website. If your website does not have its own reporting google analytics really is worth its weight in gold.
You need to have trust in the organisation providing you with SEO services as it can take anywhere between 3 - 12 months before big results are achieved. SEO is definitely a long term investment. The example I gave above is of a company selling a directory listing, which is not really SEO. In the worst case scenario these schemes can actually damage your sites credibility and even get your website blacklisted by google. Yep, if google (and the others) suspect your site of falsifying rankings (by basically buying links or placing links on dodgy websites) they could black list your site. Then you will struggle getting to the top on any search engine.
That is not to say we should ignore SEO, we just need to bear a few things in mind first. This post aims to summarise some points that will help you avoid the potential pitfalls in this dark back alley area of the web.
Before we get any further I must make a statement:
Having your website at the top of search engines is NOT a guaranteed method for increased sales and profits! There I have said it. I will explain the logic more later.
So what is SEO? Search Engine Optimisation In a Nut Shell
There are 3 main areas involved with SEO, in a nut shell, it is quite simple.
- Choose good keyword phrases.
- Good well written website with the keywords in mind. Requires step 1 first! I will go into this in a little more detail but it is out of scope of this wee blog post / rant.
- Get good links from good websites!
Focus on your content
Before even thinking about an SEO campaign you need to focus on your content!
The number one thing that will make your site more findable and profitable is good content. Good content. Like anything having a good product will make you shine above your competition. The content is the product your website is offering to its audience. Even if you have the best design in the world and the best rankings in search engines. If your content is rubbish. Your website will be a flop!
So before you spend the big bucks on an SEO scheme make sure you have run your content by marketing or a copy writer, or at least read it yourself. Here we could get drawn in to a conversion about marketing and copy writing. I'll do a quick whirlwind summary in no particular order.
- Who is your content aimed at?
- What primary goal are you trying to achieve on the particular web page or call to action? any secondary goals?
- Is the language style correct? The web is a different format, personal up front language works best. Where possible try to avoid corporate, impersonal language.
- Focus on benefits to the user.
- Build trust, try to show a legitimate company and that there are real people behind the site.
- Try to provide useful content.
Tip: Budget for your copy writing, if you only have your sights on SEO, consider sharing some for your budget for the often forgotten copy writer. They are equally important and worth their weight in gold.
Pay for a campaign with the worlds number one expert!
Before launching into an SEO campaign I would recommend testing the water with the worlds leading expert. Who? Google of course. Before investing in SEO invest a little in adwords. It is easy to track, and measure it is also the only one who can garauntee to get people to your site. You can also very tightly control your budget. Of course I m talking about doing an adwords campaign. Or pay per click. This is a cheap way to test your site. If you get no sales, or sign ups etc, then no amount of SEO will help you.
The advantage here is that you can get a feel for what the competitive keywords are. You can get a feel for which keywords give the biggest bang for your buck. Then you know what you need to optimise for.
Information Architecture
This is a posh name for making sure stuff is in the right place and given the right importance. Also that once someone gets to the site they can find what they are looking for. This makes it sound really un important, so calling it information architecture gives it an important sounding title that it deserves. This feeds into your copywriting which in turn should tell you a lot about your website. It can be a difficult process when the time or thought is not dedicated to it. Usually people ignore this step completely.
A good practise is to wire frame your website. To wire frame a site you simply sketch boxes and layouts as chunks of content-placeholders It is during this process that you should get a feel for your keyword phrases that you should be using to hit the important parts of the site.
Optimising your website
HTML defines tags that basically denote the structure of a document. For example <h1> simply defines a top level heading. <p> for paragraph, <h2> for a second level heading, and many others. But no difficult concepts to grasp there really.
So when a search engine crawls your website it indexes content and takes these tags into consideration. For example a heading 1 tag has a higher importance that many other tags. Therefore when reviewing your website copy. Make sure headings have good titles that will help search engines and also include your keywords where possible (and sensible). For example a heading like, "More detail" doesn't really say anything. However. "More detail on company X widgets" does tell you a bit more and a search engine will know that the rest of the content is relevant to "Company X Widget"
To Wrap It All Up (no web design keywords in this one) ah ha!
So there you have it a quick tour on findability. Make your content great. Content is king (a phrase that bashes around the web dev world a lot), make it easy to find and understand. Make sure your website is optimised for your content. Give your website developer good content! Make sure the different areas are well integrated. Once we have this our designer will know how to highlight the important stuff.
Well that sums it up for now. End of the SEO rant. :-)
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