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Search Engine Optimisation is a vital set of techniques to understand and to use when it comes to owning a website, particularly if you aim to see as many visitors as possible. What effective SEO achieves is to improve the way in which the various search engines (such as Google, Yahoo and so on) perceive your site with a resultant improvement in rankings and thus traffic. Firstly, decide which keywords will drive traffic and are winnable when balanced with the level of competition. There are plenty of guides on “keyword selection” available for free online. Keywords will drive everything else you do. There are three areas to consider, these are touched upon below.

Site code

Unless you are technical you may need some help with this. Each page needs to have a relevant URL (page address), the right tags focused on your keywords, effective use of header tags, bold, image ALT text and internal links and anchor text. If these terms don`t make any sense to you, either spend a little time searching for free online advice on “on-page optimisation” or get some help. Most of today`s successful webmasters have taught themselves the techniques in precisely this way. Many web developers do not understand SEO so make sure that anyone you choose can demonstrate clients with strong rankings and can explain to you – slowly and in English – the main elements of on-page SEO and their effect.

Content

On-site content is absolutely vital. Lots of fresh, high quality, original, relevant content containing your target keywords (at between 2 and 4% density ideally). Content must of course be your own – the search engines filter out and even penalise duplicate content. History is also important: better to continually add a few new content pages per month than to add it all in one go. This sends a signal to the search engines that the site is alive and evolving. Content must be syntactically and grammatically correct (the search engines are also sensitive to this).

Links

Links from other sites send a signal to the search engines that others regard it as being of value and are a very significant factor in search ranking. They are notoriously hard to get and the search industry is awash with firms selling low quality linking solutions. There are, however, decent firms who will handle the job properly. Alternatively you can go it alone and make contact with other sites that compliment your own with a view to setting up a link relationship. The most powerful links are those that link to you and which you do not return – so-called “inbound-only” links but you need to give the other party something of value in return. This cannot be cold hard cash – get found buying links and you can say goodbye to your presence in the search engines. Maybe you can offer access to some free stuff, provide them with a widget, free images, content or anything else that isn`t money but is of value.

SEO is extremely hard work, reflecting the level of competition online. Results are generally measured in many months rather than weeks although the occasional quick win is possible. However, if you put the effort in, you will be rewarded with a long term return on investment that is impossible to recreate in almost any other marketing or sales channel.