Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Website Promotion

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search Engine Optimization is the practice of improving a website's ranking on search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN Live for specific keywords and phrases.

These keywords and phrases represent the products and services your website offers and which are most likely to be typed in by searchers.

Why do you need SEO?

Online search using search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Live Search has become the most popular way of finding products, services and information locally, nationally or globally.

A higher rank in the search results of Google, Yahoo or MSN Live leads to a greater number of visitors and increased sales.

Internet users hardly ever go beyond the top 3 pages of search results for a single search. The first three pages receive over 90% of search traffic.

How do you SEO?

Search engine optimisation is typically achieved by changing a website's internal factors such as its code, technical structure, keywords and phrases, and external factors such as incoming links and popularity.

Why is the code and the technical structure of a website so important?

Search engines and human visitors view websites totally differently. While you see a nicely rendered page with colourful text, pictures and graphics; all search engines see is a page full of code. (See for yourself. Select View from the top menu of the browser then Source or Page Source. That is roughly what search engines see.) So a pretty looking website for a human visitor may be a pile of mess for a search engine and as a result your ranking will suffer or, even worse, you may not appear at all.

At VisioSoft, we make our websites accessible for both human visitors and search engines. We achieve this by hand coding and perfectly structuring our websites.

How do you work on keywords and phrases?

In three steps...

The first step is keyword discovery. Think about the goods, services and information you are providing and then put yourself in the shoes of sombody who is looking for these. What would you type in the search engine's search box? Write it down. Include variations such as singulars, plurals, similar words, and common misspellings. These are your primary keywords and phrases.

The second step is keyword analysis. Now you need to refine the keywords and phrases you discovered in the first step. You can simply do a search on Google and see how popular the keywords are. Check how many pages are found and how relevant they are to the services and products you are offering. There are also free tools such as Google Adwords Keyword Tool and tools you can buy such as Wordtracker for keyword analysis. Work out the popularity and relevance of these keywords and sort them in order of importance.

The third step is implementation. In this step write or re-write your text content using your keywords and phrases. Then put the text on your webpages paying particular attention to the technical location of keywords.

How do you build inbound links?

Inbound links - also known as back links - are the links pointing to your website from other websites. (As opposed to outbound links that point to other websites from your website.) They are a very important part of the search engine optimisation process. Search engines view them as a positive vote for your website.

The number of inbound links are important but not all inbound links are the same. If they come from an important and high ranking site they carry more weight. If they come from a bad site they could even damage your ranking.

The anchor text of an inbound link is significant. A link text that includes your keywords is much more valuable than, for example, a simple click here link.

The best way to start link building is to register with the local, national and international directories. Get involved in user groups and professional and social networks. Avoid link farms and other dodgy websites. Take your time. SEO is not achieved overnight.

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