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Search Engine Optimisation Basics

A lot of SEO is just common sense, and repetition. Strange then that the majority of SEO experts seem to selling you snake oil. The problem with SEO, like lots of things in life, is that it takes work, and there is no silver bullet. It’s a combination of lots of little things. The keys things that it’s made of:

  • Good quality code and a fast site. Google likes sites that load fast and are built properly.
  • Properly structured content. A decent site structure, sensible page names and URLS, putting keywords in the H1 title tags, internally linking to pages.
  • The content itself. It takes more repetition than you think and it really helps to target your content to specific searches e.g. ‘WordPress developer in Bristol’.
  • Links. You linking to other sites that build a picture that you work in this field. More importantly people linking to you (back links). The more involved in this line of work the sites that link to you are and the more prestigious the better.

Clean Code and a good structure

Having a solid foundation of clean code and a planned out URL structure is the way to start. The titles should use a proper hierarchy. Ideally this is a heading 1 for the main title that matches the URL. The URLS should match your targetting search terms.

You need good page speed too and to not have a bloated site with unnecessary plugins. This is your starting point that any decent web developer worth their salt should be able to achieve.

Keyword, Location and Niche

The key thing is to hone in on a term you want to rank for and make sure this is used liberally and featured in page URLS. You also need to pick a search term that is achievable and realistic. For instance ‘web developer for hire’ is going to be really hard to rank for and does anyone even search like that?

A more achievable search to rank for would be ‘Bristol Web Developer’, which is also something people in Bristol are more likely to search for. By adding a location you are narrowing down the search and working towards the way people actually search. It’s for this reason you often find multiple pages for different areas in the service section of companies sites e.g. ‘Emergency Plumber in Bristol’, ‘Emergency Plummer in Bath’.

Another thing you can do is target a narrower search. e.g. not ‘Bristol web developer’ but ‘Bristol WordPress developer’. By niching down a bit more you shrink the audience, but increase your chances of ranking higher for that term.

If you google ‘Design agency Bristol’ you’re going to get ALL the design agencies. Better to targer your niche e.g. ‘Events design agency Bristol’ or ‘Brochure design agency Bristol’.

Repetition of Key Terms

Google worked out a long time ago that people would be trying to crack their search algorithm and have had systems to combat keyword stuffing since they began. Keyword stuffing it just repeating the same term over and over, maybe even changing font colour to black and putting it on a black background and writing the term out 100 terms on a page.

You can’t do that without being heavily penalised. What you can do though is write content in a natural way, but a slightly more long winded way. There is a style of content the search engines find easier to parse. Headings summarising a chapter followed by a short amount of content  (like this blog!). It’s actually an OK way to write, if not a little mechanical. A good way to repeat terms without needlessly repeating yourself is multiple pages filled with content and internal links.

Internal Links

Internal links are ones that link to somewhere else on your site. So on your home page you could say that you do design work in Bristol and link to a page on your site that has the URL ‘design-work-in-bristol’. The bonus of using this key term in a page (and the matching title) is that every time you list out this link you are repeating the search term.

For instance ‘design in Bristol’ might be in your main menu, then you might link body text on the home page that mentions it. Then maybe you are also listing out links in the footer.  Having links in the header and footer of the site (especially with long pages) is a useful thing to do – it’s repetition, but for a valid reason so google allows it.

Having thess internal links helps connect everything together. It makes a really clear site structure for googles robots to parse and make proper sense of the content of your site.

Inbound Links / Back Links

Once you have clean code, a decent structure, and search friendly content the next step is trying to get backlinks. This is where other people link to your site.  Google uses these to get a picture of where you sit in the world and your industry. If you are claiming to be the best plumber in Bath is there any other info out there that supports this? Are other sites relating to plumbing or plumbing supplies linking to you?

The key here is building up authority and having quality back links. If you are a childrens author and you are getting linked to several well known publishing houses and online book retailers then it tells google that you are who you say you are, and that you are well known in these circles.

Back links can be tricky, not everyone has a reason to link to a plumbers website! What you can do at the very least is sign up to local societies e.g. trades man in Bath websites, guild of plumbers etc. This are often listing sites that will link to your site and help build up that picture for google that everything you do is plumbing (or whatever it is you do!) related.

Another good source of back links is social media and writing guest blogs in other media publications and websites. Obviously not everyone can do this (not sure how many plumber blogs there are) but creating content on YouTube and linking to it (and vice versa) helps build up that picture.

Blogging and regular content

A good long term strategy for SEO is to have a blog on your website (oh, hi!). This gives you chances to expand on the content and keywords of your site. It also makes sure that you content keeps getting updated, so your site doesn’t look stagnant to google.

More than this you might get people finding your site through the content you make. For instance, an article you write could maybe be shared lots of times on social media, or maybe it’s a topic not many people are talking about.

In this case your article might become the article that appears when people search for this sort of thing. Again it all adds to connect all the dots for google. It also helps build trust and authority in space, and obviously it doesn’t have to purely cynical marketing – you can share useful information that helps people.

This is often seen with design communities or courses. They offer a free useful product or giveaway. A free font, a free icon set etc. It gets lots of traffic to their site, but also if it’s genuinely good and useful people might remember them and use them when they need design services.