Cirencester Website Design

Search engine optimisation basics

There are a number of factors (around 30) that impact your website’s position on search engines.  Given that there are 30 plus elements that must be considered it becomes obvious that search engine optimisation is not something that can achieved easily by everyone.

Professional SEO’s will take around 20 hours per page / keyword to do the job properly.  This is why SEO is often seen as expensive and why most people try (…most fail) to do it themselves.

In this series of articles I will do my best to explain the SEO process and offer free resources, where they exist, to help you along the way.

The big SEO picture

Keywords drive the Internet so finding the right keywords is by far the biggest and most important task.  If you are not familiar with keywords or need to know more read our Keywords article here.

Having established your keywords the next task is to make an initial attempt to optimise the relevant page of your website.  A good “free” tool is the SEOmoz Term Taget tool this will grade your page specifically for a given keyword.  It is pretty simple to use just add your URL and the keyword and it will then grade your page.  Make the recommended changes / additions until your page reaches grade A or A+.

Using the above you have the tools to find keywords and to optimise your “on-site” website pages.  The next stage is SEO positioning.

SEO positioning

Continued from Search engine optimisation basics This covered keywords and on-site web page optimisation.

SEO position is to take a look at the bigger picture by taking in the top ten competitors for you keywords.  Comparing your web pages / keywords to the existing top ten ranking competitors makes a lot of sense.  Search engines change the way they index website’s regularly so the only guaranteed way to keep up is by using the pages that match Google’s “current”  criteria by being in the top ten themselves.

In this section we are going to look at the 23 main key performance indicators (KPI’s).  Because of the amount of information we have split them across 4 sections in priority order.  This builds on the simple SEOmoz Term Taget tool used in the Search engine optimisation basics section.  What we are going to do is to compare our web page specifically against the existing top ten competitors.

We have broken this down into logical groupings that have most impact on your website’s performance.  Hence by completing section you will have improved your chances by 40% completing other sections will take this to 100%.  Specifically the activity groupings are as follows.  Click the link to get a detailed “How to” for each section:

Vital  – 40% plus weighting:
1.    Keyword use in document title
2.    Global link popularity of web site
3.    Link texts of inbound links
4.    Keyword use in body text

Essential – 25% weighting:
1.    Age of web site
2.    Keyword use in H1 headline texts

Must do – 20% weighting:
1.    Keyword use in domain name
2.    Keyword use in page URL
3.    Links from social networks
4.    Page load time
5.    Keyword use in H2-H6 headline texts
6.    Keyword use in IMG ALT attributes
7.    Top level domain of web site
8.    Keyword used in bold text
9.    Number of visitors

Should do – 15% weighting
1.    Keyword use in same domain links
2.    Keyword use in meta description
3.    Number of trailing slashes in URL
4.    HTML validation of web page to W3C standards
5.    Readability level of web page
6.    Keyword use in meta keywords
7.    Keyword use in the first sentence of the body text
8.    Factors that could prevent your top ranking

To obtain specific information about each activity click on the heading to go to the relevant section.

SEO positioning Improve your website by 40%

1. Keyword use in document title. Open each of the top 10 and note the page title. This appears right at the very top of the browser window on the left hand side. Make a note of how the keyword has been used and how many other words are used.  Then modify your page title to ensure your keyword is present with a similar amount of text.  This must be unique so do not copy.
2. Global link popularity. Copy the URL of the top 10 competitors into the Google search box. But put “link:” into the search box before the URL i.e. link:bbc.com and repeat the process for all 10 competitors, plus of course your website, making a note of the number of links per website.
3. Link text of inbound links. This is covered in more detail later.
4. Keyword use in body text. This is relatively straightforward. Open the competitor’s home page and hold the control key and press “f”. This will bring up the browser search bar, enter the keyword and count the number of times it appears. Also calculate a rough proportion / percent of other text it will probably be in the region of 10-30% keyword density.

Having now done the homework on the most important part you should  now:

1. Ensure that your document title contains your keyword in a unique sentence of about the same length and density as the average for the top 10.
2. Take the average of all 10 will tell you the minimum number of links you will need for your home page. Be very careful when link building. This, by far, is best done via social networking sites like MySpace, YouTube, Blogger, Twitter, Digg etc. Do not pay for links and do not join a backlink exchange. These will do more harm than good. You can also use directory services these are often free but make sure they do not use “no follow” on their links to you.
3. Where you have links make sure that the link text includes your keyword. If you are familiar with this (HTML) your text link should look like this<a href=”http://www.services-web-design.co.uk” title=”website optimisation” target=”_blank>Website optimisation by Services Web Design</a>  which when viewed by a browser looks like this Website optimisation by Services Web Design Oh and if you appreciate this article please copy and add this link to your website or blog (thanks).
4. Keyword in body text use the same pattern, again make the content totally unique, including roughly the same amount of text in proportion to the number of times you repeat your keyword.

These 4 steps alone will help to improve your website position for the keyword by up to 40% but will have a larger impact on your website’s performance.
.: back to SEO Positioning :.  .: Forward to Essential – 25% weighting :.

SEO positioning Improve your website by 25%

1. There is nothing you can do about the age of your website if it is younger. But whilst “tenure” does count so too does an active website. Look at the competitor’s website what does it offer? Newsfeed, blog feed, Twitter feed, rotating banner, call back or contact form, live help or an area where the data changes frequently. Search engines likes change and an active website is far more interesting than a tired same old same old website. So ensure that you incorporate activity into your website.
2. Heading 1 tag. This relates to headline text it refers to an HTML tag of &lt;h1&gt; this is the largest font size and is used to indicate the most important information. Another free tip. When viewing a web page the underlying code is there too. To see it go to your browser “view” menu and select either “source” or “page source”. OK it is not so pretty and very confusing to look at. But every web page is made in pretty much the same way. So look at it again and, or use Control + f, to find “&lt;h1&gt;” just after this is the actual headline text. So look to see how the keyword is used and as before recreate it using your own words but use about the same amount of text including your keyword.

So now we should have improved your website position by 55-65%. It is at this point that a reality check is needed. The results of what you do now can take 3-6 months before you notice a change. It can be quicker and will work for all search engines. But they are in control and with billions of web pages to index they may take time to fully re-index yours. You can help them by submitting your website, by hand, do not use an automated system this will have a contrary effect. And submit a site map. I will come back to this later.
The above section and the 40% section are the big ones so the work you have now put in will have a very positive impact on your website position. But do not stop now as there are still some “gotchas” ahead.

SEO positioning Improve your website by 20%

1. Keyword use in domain name. This is useful as it places your keyword into every link you have. So if you have a domain that reflects your trading name i.e. bloggandson.com (see article “Is your website working for you?”) then it will not be working for you. Whereas www.cirencester_builder.co.uk will help you because it defines what you and where you do it.
2. Keyword use in page URL. This works in the same way as 25% point 3 above and relates your web page names. Using the scenario from above (and content from an earlier post) we start with a base URL of www.cirencester-builders.co.uk. Your home page will always be same i.e. index.html so the full address to your home page is (to a machine) www.cirencester-builders.co.uk/index.html. But let’s say that you are a building company and you build conservatories. It would be a great idea to call that page “conservatories.html” because you have then nested keywords i.e. www.cirencester-builders.co.uk/conservatories.html. Take out the address details and you have a keyword of “Cirencester builders conservatories”. Far more useful that www.bloggandson.com/page2.html.
3. Links from social networks. Social networks is more important than this position in optimisation indicates. It is number 9 because you create it. But used successfully it can have a bigger impact. For example. Twitter gives you 140 characters, pretty much the same as an SMS message, so we use this as an alert. My twit may be “How to optimise your website in real life http://winninginch.co.uk/blog/index.html” This will hopefully get a few visitors to my blog page. If they like what is written they may link to it from their website. If they do my social networking link (ranked 9th) has now become a backlink ranked 2. So check your competition to see what they are using.
4. Page load time. Ever come across a website that take ages to load? Did you wait for it or just go somewhere else. I know that I would not wait as life is too short. Search engines are programmed to think the same way. If you have a lot of images make sure their file size is small. Web images are between 72 and 96 dots per inch (dpi) which matched screen resolution. Anything larger is just wasting bandwidth as the image will not look any better but it take longer to load. Especially for those who are stuck with a 56k modem connection. Yes there are still those who do not have broadband!
5. Keyword use in H2-H6 headline texts. This is pretty much the same as 25% point 2 above. Don’t over do it and in many cases unless you find it frequently in your top 10 (see how to in 6 above) do not use them at all.
6. Keyword use in IMG ALT attributes. When you add an image or Flash to your website you add an “alternative” description. This is designed to help those who may be visually impaired using a text to speech web reader instead. The reader will describe the image using the “alt” text. Using a keyword here is useful but the best way to see if it makes sense is to close your eyes and have someone read the alternative text to you.
7. Top level domain of web site. This relates to the latter part of the domain “.com”. Search engines take note of the extension and will often give preference of one over another (depending on where you are). Google UK will give preference to sites.co.uk for UK based searches and actually does it’s best by looking at your IP address. So for those who opt to limit searches to UK only will not need to do so quite so much in the future. Personally I stopped doing that about a year ago. If you have a .com and based in the UK get a .co.uk.
8. Keyword used in bold text. See 5 above.
9. Number of visitors. This one amuses me as it is a bit of ironic. If your website was in the top 10 you would have more visitors. Go figure. But specifically this relates to Alexa rank. Alexa measures your popularity by the number of visits you have. The best way to compare this is to go to Alexa and download their browser tool. This will give you a ranking for every website you visit as well as your top 10. The higher the number the lower your visits. So Google has an Alexa ranking of between 4 and 1 which is probably the highest in the world today. As a general rule for us mere mortals if you are in the top 100,000 you are doing exceptionally well. Anything above 1,000,000 is average for most. Following this guide will help you to increase traffic which will improve your Alexa ranking too.

Congratulations you have reached somewhere around 70-85% improvement for your website. From here on in these are nice to do’s. But important if you have not been able achieve one or more of the above.

SEO positioning Improve your website by 15%

15% website optimisation section

1. Keyword use in same domain links. See  20% section point 1.
2. Keyword use in meta description. Meta tags refer to messages for search engines. Not many use them but for completeness it may be worth seeing of any of your top 10 use them. If they do it is probably a good idea for you to as well. Meta tags sit in the head of your website page. Copy the tags from a competitor and the content between each < > with your own content using keywords were appropriate.
3. Number of trailing slashes in URL. Trailing slashes defines a sub directory. Yourwebsite.co.uk is the top level and should have no other “/” or “.” In the main url. If you have then your website is part of another website and you should get your own url and hosting. The location of your home page should be yourwebsite.co.uk/index.html. Search engines gives more importance to web pages at this level. A sub directory would look like this yourwebsite.co.uk/subdirectory/webpage.html. Because there are 2 “trailing slashes” the pages at this level are view as less important. If you have content, that is important, you need to move these pages to the top level.
4. HTML validation of web page to W3C standards. The Worldwide Web Consortium is the body that defines how web pages are viewed. There is a standard set of guidelines that is used by web designers and web browser vendors. This means that regardless of technology everyone can view your website in exactly the same way as everyone else. This important as we have people using both old and new technology and the visually impaired need to be able to adjust text size so that the content can be read. Any non conformant website is automatically penalised versus a compliant website. To check your website, for free, go to W3C and enter your website address. The report is instant.
5. Readability level of web page. Readability score is based on the Flesch guidelines for readability. You can check your content either in a word processor or test it by going here
6. Keyword use in meta keywords. As per 2 above. If it exists in your competitors probably goof to have it too.
7. Keyword use in the first sentence of the body text. This is good practice and better to be at the beginning of the first sentence.
8. Factors that could prevent your top ranking. You can do everything above and still fail at this point. These are the DON’Ts like. Do not copy content everything must be original and that goes for your page titles and content. Don’t spam the search engine by repeating your keyword over and over again. That is why it is important to view your competitor’s keyword to content ratio. However, as a guideline do not exceed a keyword to text ratio of 30%. Do not get involved with link exchange websites or pay xx number of links. This will get you black listed and you will not appear on that search engine for a long time. Follow this link for the full webmaster guidelines.