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The 5 Stage SEO Process
How do you get there? Search engine optimisation (SEO):
Step 1 Keyword Research
The first step in search engine optimisation (SEO) for any website is keyword research.
What is your target audience going to type in to a search engine? Remember, we are not just talking about single words but two, three and four word phrases. The longer the phrase, the more specific it is and the less competitive it will be to rank for.
Ranking highly for a longer keyword phrase will result in less traffic, but is likely to lead to more conversions, so go after those long, specific search terms. Provided, of course, that they are relevant to your site!
Try the free Digital Point Solutions keyword suggestion tool: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/. This tool accesses the two main providers of search data, Wordtracker and Overture.
You need to find keywords that are not only going to send lots of traffic to your website, but also traffic that is going to convert into sales and clients, traffic relevant to what your site offers.
Step 2 Get Your Keywords In the Right Places
Armed with the right keywords, you are ready for ‘on-site’ or ‘on-page’ optimisation - repeating keywords in the right places within your web pages.
Although the whole of a web page is analysed by a search engine to work out what it is about and it's relevance to the phrases people type into search engines, certain parts of a page are more important. These areas are listed below.
* The title meta tag.
* The content on the page.
* The anchor text of internal links.
* The anchor text of external links.
* The description meta tag.
* The alt tags of images.
* The H1 tag.
* The filenames of pages.
* The filenames of images.
* The title tags of links.
It is worth remembering though, that no one knows exactly how search engines rank web pages.
Step 3 Search Engine Submission
The search engines need to be told a website exists, so they can analyse it and rank it against similar sites. There are two ways search engines find new sites, through sites being submitted to them and by following links from other sites (see step 4).
Search engines usually have a form you can fill in to submit a site - here are Google’s: http://www.google.com/addurl/, Live Search: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2 and Yahoo’s: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
However, hundreds of search engines are available so an automatic submission tool really helps. You can use websites like http://www.freewebsubmission.com or specialised software.
Step 4 Building Links to Your Site
Building links to your site is the most important factor in ranking higher in the search engine results. A link from another website to yours is seen as a ‘vote’ for your site by the search engines.
More links = More Votes = Higher Rankings.
Quality is very important as well as the quantity of links. Links from related pages and sites strengthen the theme and quality of your site.
Another important aspect of links is the anchor text . The anchor text should include the keywords you are targeting (or related keywords).
A few of the main ways you can get links to your site are:
* Getting reviewed by blogs.
* Submitting your site to web directories.
* Writing and submitting articles.
The best (and cheapest) way to get links to your site is to create great content that other sites will want to link to.
Step 5 Monitor Rankings and Visitors
During the process of optimising a website, it is important to check how well a site is ranking in the search engines and how many visitors it is receiving.
The easiest way to check a site's rankings is to use an online tool or specialised SEO software to automatically check many keywords and phrases on several different search engines at the same time. It can also be useful to check your competitors rankings.
Checking once every couple of weeks should give you a good picture of how well your site is doing and show you the effects of your SEO efforts over time.
To see how many visitors have found your site and the search phrases they have used, check your website traffic statistics. This will help you see if you are targeting the right keywords.
These are the basic steps involved in optimising a site so it will rank in the search engines, but SEO is an ongoing process. You need to continue to build links to your site, add new content and monitor your own, and you competitors rankings.
