Many small business owners who run their own websites are often perplexed by the subject of search engine optimization and can fall prey to so-called experts who will make the whole issue sound like some magic art. In reality good SEO is just a matter of common sense and of formatting web pages in a manner which helps search engines understand what the content is about.

How Search Engines Work
In order to best optimize one’s own website it is necessary to have a basic understanding of how search engines like Google work.

Search engines use applications called Robots or Bots which explore the internet, finding new web pages by following links from other established sites. These new pages are continually indexed, processed and assigned relevance and authority for certain key words and phrases.

The way that all of this information is processed and the relevance calculated is very complex and is, in the most part, a mathematical calculation. In simple terms, a search engine doesn’t judge a web page in the same way a person does and this is where you can help by adopting good SEO techniques.

A search engine will evaluate each web page by first attempting to guess what the page is about. So having a descriptive URL, succinct titles and headings will make this clearer. Ensuring that the textual content of the page is relevant by using appropriate keywords will also help. It is not a matter of just repeating the words you want to rank for, more a matter of using these words in context and in a way which appears natural.

On Site SEO

On-Site SEO can be described as the measures you take within the website itself to optimise its performance in search results.

URL, Text and Titles
As an example, if you were targeting the phrase ‘Home Made Wedding Stationery’ then it would be a good idea to use these words in the filename of the page so the url would be something like: ‘mysite.com/homemade-wedding-stationery.htm’.
You could also entitle the page with the same or a similar phrase such as ‘Hand Crafted Wedding Stationery’.

The main title and headings within the page should also follow the same logic – so bear in mind your target phrase but vary it slightly so that it a) looks natural and b) also catches variations of the phrase as not everyone will use the exact same words.

The page itself should also contain these phrases and keywords but not in a way that looks artificial. For example the opening paragraph could say something like:

‘If you are planning your wedding day and are considering an alternative to traditional printed wedding stationery then I hope you will consider my range of handmade wedding invitations, save the date cards and bespoke RSVP cards which are individually designed and created just for you’.

As you can see – there is no mistaking what this site is all about and in one paragraph we now have some useful search phrases.

Internal links and outgoing links can also be used to good effect here. The anchor text of a link should also be descriptive rather than just saying ‘click here’ they can describe where they are going and use relevant keywords.

Images
Good images are the key to good website design and can also be employed in terms of SEO. It’s important to understand that search engines can’t see images – they know there is an image there but have difficulty knowing what the image is. As with your page’s file-name it is good practice to save images using descriptive file-names rather than just random text and numbers. Good ‘alt text’ descriptions also help. Don’t try and stuff as many keywords as you can in the ‘alt text’ box, try to be descriptive and brief.

So in our theoretical web-page we might have an image of a wedding invitation. You could save the file as ‘wedding-invitation-white.jpg and use the term ‘White Handmade Wedding Invitation’ as the ‘alt text’.

Off-Site SEO

Off-site SEO is the external measures you can take to best optimize your site. This is the most challenging aspect of SEO because, by its nature, you have much less direct control.

Links
The most important factor of SEO is the number and quality of other sites which link to yours. The theory goes that a good site will naturally attract external links as other sites will refer to it in order to help there users. Attracting these kinds of links can be challenging for a regular business and you’ll need to do some work in order to get the ball rolling.

Ways in which you can acquire links is to ask other sites in related areas if they will exchange links with you. You can also submit your site to a number of directories, as well as writing articles such as this one which contain a link to your site in the footer.

Remember that the anchor text needs to relevant so, wherever possible, ask those who link to you to use your targeted key phrases. Ideally links need to be from relevant sites and the more authority these sites have than the more power the link will have.

These are all established ways of getting search engines to find your site and can be effective in gaining a foothold in the search results. However, it should be stressed that these are basic measure to get started – in the long term you need other sites to link to you without being asked. These one-way ‘natural’ links are what really matter and can take some time to acquire.

Attracting Links
It is quality and not quantity which counts and one link from a well trusted and authoritative site is worth much more than a hundred links from directories and low ranking sites. Obviously, these are the hardest links to acquire but it is what you need to aim for in the long term.

The way you will get good quality links is by having good quality content and you may have to use your imagination here. Topics which attract links tend to be informative, entertaining or controversial. As per our example, a poorly written general article about stationery won’t attract much attention but some example wordings, useful advice about the etiquette of sending invitations, funny stories which are relevant to invitations or features about some of your previous clients and the theme of their wedding, for example, may well attract links from a variety of sources.

In summary good SEO doesn’t have to be complicated and isn’t difficult, it is more a case of understanding how the search engines look at your site and adapting accordingly. There are, alas, very few short cuts to gaining search engine results but if you start with good basics and continue to develop your site in a useful and ethical manner you will, eventually, reap the benefit of the effort made.
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