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The basics of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO, SEM)...


Search Engine Marketing (SEM), or Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of organic ranking or pay per click (PPC) advertising.

So, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), what's it all about and is it really as complicated as it all seems...


Well, in short, no. If you want to rank in Google then you need to know the following rules…

  • It won’t rank for at least 6-12 months if it’s a new website (by ‘new website’ I mean a domain name ie www.yourdomain.com that you’ve just bought through a domain name registrar like 123-reg.com).
  • Search engines like Google take snap shots of your website ie. It stores all the webpages of your website, that it can see (including text, images and links) in it’s huge database. So, when you search for something (better known as ‘keywords’) in Google’s search engine, Google searches for the most relevant matches for those keywords in its database. If your website isn’t optimized for those keywords, Google won’t find your page in its database... see not that complicated to understand?!
  • Your page titles, web address, headings (Heading 1, Heading 2 etc), and content of your webpage MUST HAVE the same name as the keyword (search term) that your prospective customers are looking for.
  • You need to get other websites to link to yours. Google will follow these links and store the pages it finds in its database. If you don’t have a link to your website, it doesn’t know you exist.
  • It’s better to have links (linking to your website) that are relevant to what you do. For example, if you’re a plumber and you have a link from a website that sells high-heel shoes, then Google won’t see the relevance (Unless of course you’re a cross dressing plumber). If you had a link from a DIY shop then that makes more sense.
  • Having a link from a popular website (or a ‘powerful website’ ie lots of visitors) is better than having a link from a website that doesn’t have many people visiting it. The reason for this is that the ‘Powerful’ website transfers it’s power to yours – boosting your ‘Power’ (think Harry Potter and Voldermort… erm.. never mind).
  • Trying to cheat a search engine by adding a lot of links into your website all at once will not keep you there (ranking) for very long… slowly, slowly, catch monkey.
  • You can download the Google toolbar here– this tool will show you how powerful a website is because it has a ‘Page Rank’ bar. This Page Rank bar shows a score (out of 10) of how powerful that webpage is in Google. (Powerful = a website with lots of visitors)
  • Don’t put a link on your homepage, linking away from your website. That’s just silly. You wouldn’t have someone at your front door of your shop directing people to another shop!
  • So far, having a Flash driven website (that’s a website that looks like a PowerPoint presentation after drinking a lot of caffeine) will not help you be seen in Google. Having Flash elements is ok, but don’t expect a search engine to see it or any of its content.
  • Meta Tags - It’s basically information specifically for search engines to see what the web page is about, usually by adding keywords (the phrases people search for in Google). This information is not seen on the webpage and is hidden, but not from search engines.


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