SEO and other three letter words

A few of days ago I wrote a short post about choosing keywords. Now, the question is: what do you do with those keywords once you’ve chosen them?

To recap, keywords are the words that identify your site to users. So, when you go to Google and type in ‘Big Bird’ what you probably want to see is a picture of a yellow muppet, not an overweight lady. The reason why you do see a yellow muppet and not an overweight lady when you Google ‘Big Bird’ has a lot to do with how Google ranks sites based on their popularity.

Now, SEO (search engine optimisation) considers how search engines (like Google) work and what people search for. To ‘optimise’ a website, you need to edit the content (the words that appear on your site) and the HTML/associated coding of your site to increase its relevance to specific keywords and remove barriers that block the indexing activities of search engines.

Sound like a lot of mumbo jumbo? Lets break it down.

Get good code

First things first – make sure you have a great design prepared by someone who understands the importance of good coding. If your designer hasn’t asked you for your keywords somewhere along the line during the design process alarm bells should be ringing.

While you may be given a design that visually looks great, if you’re site isn’t coded properly it wont be getting any search engine love. But there is hope and a great resource that you can use to see whether you’ve got some solid code – http://validator.w3.org/ Simply input your web address and it’ll automatically bring up errors that you should ask your designer to fix.

Create relevant copy

This is where those keywords you chose come into play. When you’re creating a great website, your need to come up with pages that are relevant to your services and those important keywords. These pages need ‘titles’, ‘meta tags’ and ‘meta descriptions’. This may sound confusing, but again, Google can help us here.

When you search for something on Google it brings up results that have a ‘title’ in blue that you can click on, plus a short description underneath – that’s your ‘meta description’. You’ll see some sites have engaging titles and tempting descriptions that immediately strike you as relevant to your search… so you’re more likely to click them. Sites that have poorly formed titles and descriptions that aren’t tailored to each specific page don’t look as relevant so you’re more likely to scroll right past them.

Moral of the story – make sure you write your title and meta description well, or get someone to do it for you. These are the things that sell your site to potential visitors – doing them badly is like having a shop with no windows.

Now, once you’ve got those visitors inside your website it’s time to show them what you have to offer. Not only do you need some pretty outstanding copy to keep your browsers interested, but Google uses this keyword rich copy to rank the relevance of your site as well. For example, if you’re selling building supplies to consumers, why not offer a series of articles on DIY home projects that feature your products? Not only will this make it easier for consumers to see the relevance of your product, but Google will send you more love because it can see your site as relevant to those targeted keywords too.

Link love

One of the more simple things you can do on your website is create lots of links. If you’re working on a blog platform, or are using a CMS (content management system) this is pretty simple. Whenever you put up a new post, link to an older one, or your services page. Let your consumers browse your site through internal links that are relevant. Don’t put in a lot of useless links; people will just get frustrated and Google will rank you poorly for being irrelevant.

Work on building external links too – contact people that offer services that are complementary to your own, or offer to do guest posts on blogs that you like that will offer a link back to your site. Yes, this does take a bit of time, but nothing good comes easy, remember? Start with friends and family members that have sites – get them to link to you, and spread the word about your website.

Get social

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter aren’t just for the procrastinator. These sites can help you build up a community, essential in today’s web world. If you’re blogging, post your blog to your Twitter and Facebook accounts – you can do this automatically so it costs you nothing in time or money. Create a Facebook fan page, submit articles you’ve written to content sites, bookmark yourself on sites such as Digg and Delicious. I’ve said all this before, but I can’t stress how important it is. Sure, setting it all up may take you an hour or two, but with that hour you’ve got a years worth of on-line marketing done right there. My mum’s done a great job with this and if a 55 year old lady can work it out (in a totally new niche mind you), then I’m sure you can do it.

So as you can see a lot of this stuff isn’t really all that complex when you break it down. If you’d like to learn more you can find lots of information online and if you’re really keen, consider getting Grappone and Couzin’s SEO book – easy SEO in an hour a day. Or, you know, you could always hire someone who knows what they’re doing to give you a hand.