In tougher economic times, there’s a temptation to cut spending to preserve cash. Although some accountants might favour this approach, most marketers know that to invest wisely in times of recession is often the best way to survive now and to position yourself more favourably when the upturn returns.

Any investment into a website involves cost - regardless of whether this is internal or external. It’s either money out the door or opportunity cost.

A lot of web agencies talk about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but only practice it in a tokenistic way.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks,” the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search and industry-specific vertical search engines. (Wikipedia)

Why is optimising your website such a good thing, particularly during these times? Well, if done correctly, you can attract potentially valuable visitors by understanding more about how search engines like Google work and what types of key-phrases people are using to locate you and others like you.

Put your self into the shoes of someone looking for ‘Widget A’ for a moment. You go to Google and type ‘Widget A’. Chances are you’ll look at the first 5 results and often discard anything below that. Of course, there’s the paid ads that Google offers, but don’t you prefer to look at the ‘natural listings’ first? I suspect so. The ‘paid ads’ are usually what’s displayed in small rectangular boxes on the right hand side of the page. ‘Paid ads’ work by bidding on specific pre-determined keywords. So, if you want you ad displayed every time a visitor types ‘shears’, your rank in the ‘paid ads’ will be determined by how much you bid. ‘Natural listings’ are what’s displayed in the main body text. These come from how relevant Google determines that you are to the searcher. Some SEO specialists will argue that a combination of ‘paid ads’ and ‘natural listings’ is the best way forward. Take a look at this article from hitwise for more details.

So, if we’re marketing a product or service and want to attract ‘accidental’ visits from prospective customers, we’ll want to be towards the top of a search engine’s listings if we can.

Having described the scenario of a prospective customer searching, how can we maximize our chances of being found?

SEO can be very complicated, but there are some very straightforward steps you can take which will increase the effectiveness of your website leaps and bounds. Some may involve the co-operation of your technical team. Others, you can probably implement yourself.

Below are a few basic hints ’n’ tips to improving your web site rankings:

1. Find out if Google has stored your website in its index

Very simply, open Google and use the following expression:

cache:http://www.yourwebsite.com. (Substitute ‘yourwebsite.com’ with your domain).

This will tell you what Google has stored on its own servers.

Another thing you can try after this is:

site:http://www.yourwebsite.com. (Substitute ‘yourwebsite.com’ with your domain).

This will tell you what pages it knows of from your website.

So, if you know that your website has 20 pages, but the search reveals only 10 on Google’s index, that could mean that the pages aren’t being picked up for some reason. Probably worth investigating why!

2. Make sure your pages have ‘Title Tags’

The next one is a little technical. Know when you’re looking at a web page and you see a description of that page at the top left of the browser programme? This is generated by a tiny piece of code which is inserted into each page.

These ‘title tags’ are often overlooked, but are a very important element for search engines as they help determine the subject of that page.

When creating these, try to remember that algorithms don’t understand subtlety or inflection. Be direct.

For example, you’re selling gardening tools.

Avoid title tags such as ‘Make hay while the sun shines’ might appeal to gardeners, but is meaningless to machines.

Instead, you might try ‘Gardening tools; hedge trimmers, lawn mowers, shears, spades, forks’. Limit yourself to around 50 characters.

An extension to ‘title tags’ is ‘description tags’. They are useful, though less so for Google specifically. Ask your web team about these

3. Ensuring your ‘keywords’ feature in web site copy

Keywords are an essential part of SEO. These are words that enable the search engines to contextualize your site and determine its relevance to potential search visitors. Choosing the right keywords is a subject unto itself, often requiring substantial time and in-depth analysis to choose the right one’s which will help drive more traffic to you.

However, if you’re the gardening supplies company above, here are a few quick tips:

Try to ensure that product or service pages contain at least 120 words in total.

Try to repeat relevant key phrases 2 – 3 times in each page. For example, if the page is about supplying lawn mowers, try to include the phrase ‘lawn mower’ a few times amongst the text.

Ask your web team about including these keywords in the ‘Heading’ tags of the page code. Use variations such as ‘Lawnmowers, Lawn mowers, Grass cutting’ etc.

You might also make these key phrases stand out on the page by using bold or italics. The search engines will take note.

4. Make sure your images can be read as well as seen

You can give your images context by describing them through the use of ‘Alt’ tags. This means that search engines can ‘understand’ what your images are about and index more of your site accordingly. Another benefit of applying these ‘alt’ tags is that your website instantly becomes more accessible to hard of sight visitors who may be using screen readers to help them digest information.

5. Try to maximize opportunity for other sites to link to you

Whilst relevance is often determined by keywords and text, your ranking will improve hugely if Google can see other websites linking to you. Think of this a little like the ‘Top 40’ charts. i.e. if a lot of people buy a single, then it will rise in popularity.

The same applies to your ranking in search engines.

‘In-bound’ links are most powerful when they embed a key phrase. Rather than a link reading ‘click here’, it’s a lot better for you if it were to read ‘here’s a great company to buy your lawnmower from’.

There are so many things you can do to improve search engine ranking. Indeed, there are many books available on the subject. If you’d like more in-depth advice, feel free to get in touch.