SEO
SEO
What is it?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, or more simply helping your website be found on Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. Business owners are constantly bombarded with emails etc on how to get on the 1st page of Google. Search engine's have a wide and partially secretive criteria for ranking your website under various keywords. SEO is the process of making your website easy for a search engine to find, and put up in the right category.
How should I improve SEO?
Good SEO practices should be part and parcel of designing your website. Unfortunately due to cost/time/knowledge of a lot of website designers this is not done correctly. The simple rule to SEO is relevancy, and structure. Think of your website as an essay, it should have an index and each page should be about a particular topic. Listing all of your services on one page makes it hard for search engines to know what your focus is. Webpages should have headings and important points can be highlighted.
Should I pay an SEO expert?
Yes and No, sadly this is an industry fraught with scammers, SEO tricks, and shortcuts. These practices can be expensive and in fact cause long term harm to reputation of your website. The likes of Google spend a lot of time/money changing how they rank websites to stop SEO manipulation. However good SEO should be done by a website designer, someone you trust.
What constitutes good SEO?
Structure of website - separate pages for separate services etc
Images - Should be named according to what they are with descriptions
Headings - Like an essay Headings let search engines understand your website.
Relevant, updated content - Google's business/success is based on delivering relevant websites for searches.
Total marketing solution - Include social media, facebook, twitter, linkedin, google+
Google Webmaster tools - Google gives you info you need to optimise your website with Google - so use it.
Link Building
I've heard I need to get other websites to link to mine and this will help SEO is it true? Yes good links will improve your SEO ranking, but be careful of this practice. Good natural links that relate to your business and are through your local community are certainly worthwhile. However Google Penquin is a program designed to detect paid SEO links and you will be downgraded if Google thinks you are cheating/buying links.
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