SEO Strategy and Process
Since Google is the bench mark for search engines everything is based around them and they have some great tools to use. but please don't forget about the many other search engines that are available to you globally. Yahoo and Bing to name just a few. your website should be submitted to all of them.
If your website already exists. then you probably need to do a rather thorough search on Google to try and pin point where the pages are listed. and take note of the three elements Google displays in a listing. ( Meta Title / Meta Description / File Name or Path ) plus the page number and the listing . eg 3rd on the list of page 6. Once you have found the page listed on your search engine please note the words and phrases in Bold. These are the key words you used to find the page. This will give you an idea of the relevance of the Keyword Search to the content of your page.
Remember that even if you have set your web page meta tags, a search engine can use what they believe is the most relevant text ad overide your decision.
Analysing your Page content.
Each page/product has a subject. and just like an essay each page has a Title (heading) / Introduction / Content / Conclusion (footer) The subject needs to be referenced in all of these elements. Plus we also have hidden elements in HTML - META TITLE, META DESCRIPTION, Filename.
Once you have analysed your pages content and believe you have found the key words or phrase that people would use in a search engine to find it. We can then anaylse these words with a great online tool from Google
Here you can search Google database for your key words, Google will then display similar words and phrases based on this search and rank them. You can play around with this tool and gather alternative words and phrases that may apply to the individual page or product. Google has limited the results it will show for users who are not currently paying for advertising with it's search engine. There are however other free keyword tools available online you could use instead.
Please not that Google Search is localized. i.e based on your IP address it will default to Google.co.nz and will then give higher reference to New Zealand sites. (NZ Domains and NZ hosted Websites) This also means that we should include Locational words in our Pages Content and Meta Data. such as Auckland NZ, Auckland New Zealand, or Royal Oak, Auckland, New Zealand. especially useful for service industries.
Checking the Page Content
Now that we have found the pages Target keywords. We need to check the page content. "Content Writing" is a profession these days but if we follow the basics then we will succeed.
The basics are:
- make sure your key words or phrases are in all important elements
- begin each element with your strongest keyword followed by the second and so on
By Element I mean the pages Meta Data (META TITLE, META DESCRIPTION) and the page content structure (PAGE HEADING
First Paragraph, Last Paragraph.
Now obviously we do not want all of these elements to be exactly the same. so we can skillfully write the same thing in different ways. using a combination of the keywords.
Once our content and Meta data is full of our key words / phrases. we can then look at back linking.
back-linking is using keywords to link to pages or websites that relate to that term. The home page of a website is the perfect example of this. as it usually introduces a general overview of the sites content,. Each time a key word is used we can convert it into a link and link to the page that contains that information. What this does is tell a search engine that this link called ".." and it references this page, which uses this key word "..". Google then thinks that this page is very important based on the Keyword used to link to it. the more links you have pointing to a page. then a search engine should rate that page highly and therefore list it higher up the ladder. this becomes really good when you have external links. Links from other websites linking to your site pages.
The best example of this is Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/
Now that the site is set up and full of our search termsand internal and external links. we can resubmit the site to google and other search engines. Google is very good at finding and searching websites using its Robots. but it doesn't hurt to remind it once in while that the site exists. especially if changes have been made. However this should be done no more than once a month. otherwise google will become annoyed and start ignoring it.
A Search engine may take time to list you sites or its changes. so please be prepared for this. sometimes its within a few days, sometimes listings can take weeks to update.
Please note that a web pages filename or path then becomes very important. If you change a html File name. to a better key word. eg. Keywords.html to BetterKeyword.html you have created a new document on the server.
If you delete the old page from the server then any backlink on your site or third party site is broken + any existing Search Engine Listing is also broken. hence you create what is called 404 errors. However if you retain the old page then you are also providing old information to the viewer and Search Engine.
By removing all internal links to the old page. you slowly remove the ability for viewers and Robots to find the page. Eventually these pages and links will be delisted, and you are safe to delete them. Sometimes old listings can stay in a search engine for a very long time before being cleaned out. A quick fix is to keep the existing HTML files and include a redirect script to the new page.
Monitoring Search Engines
Now that Your SEO is complete you need to monitor when Search Engines such as Google will update the listings. so over the next few weeks/months do periodic searches based on the key words, and document, page listings and updates.
Ongoing SEO refers to monitoring these listings and analysing each pages content. Tweaking the Meta and page content as you go to help raise the listing above the competition.
To help manage a website's SEO you can use Tools to help analyse your websites progress and statistics. Google Analytics is a well known tool for this and has a plathora of information at your fingretips to analyse. You'll need and account with them which can also be linked to Google Ads.
Google Ads is a great option for promoting your website or a specific page on your website. Google adds are displayed on the right of any key word search and usually the first three listings on the first page.
Other tools that may be of use.
Registering a business on Google maps / and directories..
Using Facebook as a social media toosl. you can also embed your web page in facebook wall posts. + advertising on facebook has become a fine art.