What is Organic SEO?
SEO is the abbreviation for Search Engine Optimisation, a process used to improve a website's visibility within the Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc...). SEO is primarily split into two divisions: on-page optimisation, the focus of improving the actual individual pages of the website helping with how a search engine scores your website and off-page optimisation – creating inbound links to your site from various sources (articles, press releases, directory submissions, social media etc ...)
On-Page Optimisation
As touched on above, on-page SEO is the focus of improving your website. On page SEO takes in many various factors, the main aim to help your site achieve higher positions in the Search Engines for the organic keyword searches relative to your site. These factors are basic in principle. However, on-page SEO can also be much deeper than just sorting out Title tags, Headers and Keyword placement (which we will go into more in a moment). Basic SEO principles cover the following areas:
- Title Tags should be relative to the page to which they serve. The Title tag should contain the keyword(s) of which is most important to the information contained within the page. For most effectiveness, Title tags should remain within 64 characters in length (Search Engines will index more but it dilutes the strength of your most promiment keywords which should be placed at the very beginning for maximum effect.)
- Headers are a way of distinguishing a documents (web page) main points. Having your keyword within Headers is a good way to reinforce to a visiting search engine spider or crawler what your web page is about. However, proper use of headers within a document is important, semantics also play a part in Headers i.e. H1 > H2 > H3 > H4 > H5 > H6 relays the important structure of which a document should be read. Remember, visitors to your site, scan your pages looking to indicators as to why they should read your written content, Headers play an important part to the reader much like bullet points, bolded text and images/graphics in catching their attention.
- Organic SEO Friendly URL's are an important factor in distinguishing your site for the keyword focused content that is important when concerning ranking. Having your prominent keywords available in your URL reinforces the optimisation needs of your Title Tag, Headers, Bolded Text and promiment positions within your content.
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Canonicalisation is making sure that your site has 1 entry point to which the search engines appoint as the main way your site displays in their indexes. For example a site with poor canonicalisation may have 4 entry points:
Optimising your entry points from 4 to 1 is a way to stop any search engine penalties from being carried out on your site and also helps diluting the page weight (pagerank) of your homepage.- 1 www.yoursite.co.uk
- 2 yoursite.co.uk
- 3 www.yoursite.co.uk/index.html
- 4 yoursite.co.uk/index.html
- WebPage Content is where you sell your company/service/product and poor performing content relates to poor performing search engine rankings! Do NOT copy content from another site! Do NOT spam keywords throughout your content in the hope that it will increase your SEO benefits! Do NOT try and hide content or spammy, keyword driven paragraphs by making the font size so small the eye can't pick it up! Do NOT use the same coloured font as the background! Do NOT stuff spammy keyword rich content into a layer or element hidden/or made scrollable by CSS. Do NOT buy into the theory of Keyword density! Do produce relative content that you feel is worthy, naturally written and speaks volumes of how best to sell your company/product/service online. Consider, keyword placement over keyword stuffing : people don't want to read content that has a certain word repeated over and over again.
Off-Page Optimisation
- Articles & Press Releases, creating an article or PR is an age old act in marketing. The main theme is that you release content which is worthy to the niche or markets you are actively part of and within your content or bio have links to your site, preferably deep links, where the reader can read / learn more about the subject you have released.
- Social Media the new age in creating a stir about your company/product/service. Generating a social media profile is not easy, and it can be time consuming, however, successful participants can achieve a mass volume of targetted traffic to their sites that search engines cannot match in real time.
- Directory Submissions used to be the way traffic connected with your site, long before Google took its lead. Today, there are very few directories that still perform traffic generation in masses, and even fewer directories that pass much weight in linkage terms. However, they still perform a part of a credible link building campaign, but only the most beneficial pass any weight in terms of links.
- Link Procurement, sometimes, links cost, and some cost a great deal. You have to consider what a link is worth in monetary terms. If the link is nofollowed, and only delivers traffic, as long as the traffic is qualitive, then it is a good purchase. Buying links can get your site in trouble, if they are bought for ranking purposes only! If you are unsure about how your SEO link building campaign is taking shape then you can always check with Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Hopefully, this introduction into SEO will enable those that read this article to consider hiring a respectable SEO Company. If you have any questions regarding your site or would like to talk more about SEO then please use the form provided. You can read more about our SEO & Marketing Costs here. Please be aware that North South Media no longer offer our Free SEO website evaluation! But we are available for consultation. If you would like us to perform SEO consulatation on your website then call us on 01294 554060 for more advice.
