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HO-12: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Having developed your business website/E-Shop the next task is to make sure that your potential customers can find you. The aim here is to optimise your website/E-Shop so that it takes advantage of search engine optimization (SEO) and gets lots of page views. There main elements in an effective SEO campaign are:
• keyword research • web content and structure • link building
1. Research and Identify Keywords
The first step is to think about the ‘Keywords’ that you can use to describe your site. Although you may initially find it difficult to identify which keywords to use, the best place to start is by jotting down a few words that you, or family and friends, think best reflect what your site is all about.
1. For example, let’s consider Innocent Drinks (http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/):
2. Open the website and select the page source view. This reveals a number of meta tags within the page’s <head></head>.
ITApps 2010/11 Page 2 of 7 3. For now we are interested in the content of the “keywords” meta tag. This shows that
Innocent Drinks have used the following Keywords: "fruit, fruit drinks, smoothies, thickies, natural, products, drinks, innocent, little tasty drinks, Juicy Waters, detox, smoothie, healthy, pure, crushed, uk, british, drinks company, fruit towers, innocent drinks"
4. The next step is to identify keywords that your potential customers may use as they search for products/services of the type you offer on the web. Let’s use another example, this time Yum Juices, to see how we go about the process of identifying relevant keywords.
5. The first step is to generate a list of ideas, these could include: “fruit juices, vegetable juices, berry juices, healthy juices, pure juices, juices, slimming juices”.
6. If you are stuck for ideas try using keyword suggestion generator tools such as: • http://keywordfinder.org/
• http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-niche-finder
• http://www.seo-watch.org.uk/tools/keyword-suggestion-generator/ 7. Open these tools in turn and experiment with them, using (i) Fruit Juices and (ii)
phrases relevant to your own website/E-Shop to identify relevant keywords: (1) Keywordfinder:
ITApps 2010/11 Page 3 of 7 (3) Keyword Suggestion Generator:
8. Once you have tried this out for Yum Juices, repeat for your own sites.
9. Each of the keyword tools should help you generate a list of keywords or phrases that are relevant to your site.
2. Check the Popularity of the Keywords
1. The next step involves checking the popularity of the keywords or phrases using the Google Keyword Tool: http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal 2. Open up the Google Keyword Tool and conduct some initial research on the phrase
“Fruit Juices” (1). Since Yum Juices are based in the UK, choose UK and English in the Locations and Languages box in the ‘Advanced options’ drop-down menus. Note: It’s important to set a ‘location’ when you’re conducting keyword research as keywords can vary greatly from region to region based on a number of factors.
3. When you select Search you should see a table of keywords closely related to the phrase you entered (see figure below):
ITApps 2010/11 Page 4 of 7 4. To understand more about what each columns shows click on ‘About this data’ (2).
You can also use different criteria to sort the data by ‘Relevance’ (3) and adjust which columns are displayed (4).
5. Let’s focus on Global Monthly Searches for the sake of our initial keyword research. Click on that column heading and it will re-sort the keywords by volume, from highest to lowest. In this case ‘fruit juices’ is by far the most popular phrase used in monthly searches.
6. You can further refine this list by changing the ‘Match types’: Broad, [Exact] or “Phrase” (5). Select [Exact] as the ‘Match type’ and the list of keywords in the main panel should automatically update:
7. Next filter the searches by clicking on the heading of the column labelled ‘Local Monthly Searches’, this shows us the number of searches for each Keyword in the region you selected (in this case the UK). These keywords, depending on their relevance, should be the ones that are included in your SEO strategy.
8. Repeat the above process using a keyword/phrase relevant to your own website/E-Shop and identify the top-10 Keywords used in searches.
9. Then with different search engines use your top-10 keywords to check the nature of the competition that exists out there for your business.
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3. Web Content and Structure – Meta Tags
The <meta> tag provides metadata about the HTML document and is not
displayed when the webpage is opened in a browser. Meta tags are typically used
to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified, etc.
Metadata is used by browsers (e.g. how to display content), search engines
(keywords), or other web services: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp.
As we saw in the case of ‘Innocent Drinks’ (http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/), the
<meta> tag always goes inside the head element in our html file. In this respect
the ‘Innocent Drinks’ website made use of three meta-tags: “description”,
“keywords” and “author” which provided the following information:
•
Description
: “Hello, we make lovely natural fruit drinks like pure fruit
smoothies and fresh yoghurt thickies. Everything we produce tastes good
and does you good."
•
Keywords
: "fruit, fruit drinks, smoothies, thickies, natural, products, drinks,
innocent, little tasty drinks, Juicy Waters, detox, smoothie, healthy, pure,
crushed, uk, british, drinks company, fruit towers, innocent drinks"
•
Author
: "Site design and technology by Lightmaker.com"
In addition the pages also contain a more descriptive title tag:
•
Title
: “innocent - fruit smoothies, thickies, orange juice and tasty veg pots”
The information inside the <meta> and <title> tags is a crucial element in any SEO
strategy, as the <meta> and <title> tags are used by search engines when they
index a sites pages. Ideally the keywords should be repeated in the title and
description and also within the page structure (headings and content), but the
latter will be considered in more detail in section 4 below.
For now let’s consider how we can apply what we have learnt about <meta> and
<title> tags, first in relation to Yum Juices and then how you can apply this your
own website/E-Shop:
1. If you look at the original Yum Juices home page, you will note that home page title: <title>Yum Juices</title>, doesn’t contain any of our keywords:
ITApps 2010/11 Page 6 of 7 2. Since the <title> is used for bookmarks and in search engine results, for best
optimisation we should include keywords/the search phrase in the title, in a way that doesn’t look too ridiculous. For Yum Juices, for example, this could be updated to: <title>
Yum Juices - Fruit Juices, Berry Juices, Vegetable Juices, Healthy Juices </title>
3. Next add the Keywords <meta> tag (http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp), keeping in mind that most search engines ignore the keywords on a page, so you don't need to go crazy with them. Just use your keyword phrase a few times in different combinations.
4. Possible keyword combinations for the yum juices pages are: “fruit juices, vegetable juices, berry juices, healthy juices, pure juices, juices, slimming juices”.
5. These need to be added in a meta tag within the page <head> as follows:
<meta name="keywords" content="“fruit juices, vegetable juices, berry juices, healthy juices, pure juices, juices, slimming juices” />
6. Next add a page description <meta> tag. This should be a short piece of text that explains what the page is about and uses your keyword phrase(s) at least once. The description is used as the description in search engine results, so you should add text that will entice people to click to your page.
A page description for yum juices could include:
“Yum is one of the largest specialist juice stockists in the United Kingdom. We specialise in bringing the freshest, most-refreshing, most exiting and healthy juices available over the Internet direct to your door. Choose from an incredible range of types and flavours: we have fruit juices, berry juices, vegetable juices, healthy juices and slimming juices that will wake you up, knock you over, keep you healthy and keep you looking as slim and fit as you have ever looked”.
ITApps 2010/11 Page 7 of 7 8. Repeat this now adding appropriate <title> and <meta> tags for your website pages.
4. Web Content and Structure – Headings and Content
1. The heading tags <h1>, <h2>, etc that display content on the page are also important and need to be optimised for search engines by including the keyword phrase(s), again without making the text look too ridiculous or cumbersome. This will ensure that search engines see the page headings and rate them accordingly
2. The key here is to use an appropriate <h1> header on each page. For example, for Yum Juices we could replace the current header:
<h1>Yum Juices</h1> by:
<h1>Yum Juices – Healthy Natural Juices</h1>
3. You also need to make sure that you use relevant content in your sub-title header tags, again if possible using phrases that repeat your keywords. Again, you shouldn’t go overboard, as you want the page to remain readable and interesting.
4. You can see updated pages for Yum Juices on: http://yumjuices.atspace.co.uk/ 5. Now consider how this can be applied to your own website/E-Shop and update your
home page accordingly.
5. Final Word on Keywords
Because people have abused the <meta> keywords, search engines no longer pay much attention to keywords when it comes to ranking pages. However, the idea of searching for keywords is still very valid and what you need to remember is that keywords you add in the <meta> tag, should already exist in the body of the page.
Also note that keywords in the page that are higher than the others take a higher "mark" when it comes to page ranking, and the <h1> and <h2> tags are the more important than the rest.
Finally, you should also review Google’s thoughts on SEO:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291 and work through their Starter Guide to SEO:
