What are Search Engine Optimisation’s Three Simple Secrets? Simple because its easy enough for anyone to be able to do. Secret since its so simple, that web site owners don’t spend the time doing it, nor doing it appropriately.
SearchMasters rank top for their industry search phrase Search Engine Optimisation on the local search Google.co.nz. They train web developers and individual clients, as well as SEO’ing and internet marketing a large number of sites. The majority of websites that SearchMasters are asked to help, fail in these three simple secrets including some web developers own websites.
- Search phrase selection
- Adding the search phrases to the head of the document
- Adding to the content of the page
While there are many other things that are needed for correct Search Engine Optimisation, the above three secrets should be the 1st steps to SEO’ing any web page on a site. Many people focus firstly on inbound links, and yet the words on their pages are not properly targeted. With in-bound links strategy, you need to target the search phrases selected, and have them as link text. But without first selecting the proper key words, link building is not worth much.
1. Search Phrase Selection
What words are people searching on Google for – use the Google Keyword Selection tool – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
- pick the country that you are targeting
- pick “exact” match – not broad match since you are after traffic for the exact phrase
- sort by the “Local Search Volume” column
Think about regionalisation – your suburb, city, region, country name in the keyword phrase
Think about categorisation – what are the categories that your services or products fit into.
Competition Analysis
Search on your target Google domain (ie Google.com, or Google.ca, etc) and use the SEO for Firefox plugin.
I set the SEO for Firefox tool to show Google PR with an automatic 1 second update, and Yahoo site links as the same.
I think about my clients site and its present Google PR and amount of in-coming links, and assess against the competitors PR and incoming links. Am I able to get the client into the top 10? Or is there another phrase that maybe has less traffic, but is more achievable.
What search phrases per page
Pick the most competitive, but also achievable search phrases for the homepage – the general category that you are selling your services or goods into.
Pick 1 more page of your site as a 2nd page for each of the targeted homepage key words. This gives you the possibility of an indented result for the Google search – two results out of ten for a typical google search. Having a webpage that is able to be an indented result will often lift the ranking of your main page even if the second page is not actually showing.
If you are an shopping cart site, think about all the other distinct categories that your products could fit into. Create 1 page for each keyword or groups of search phrases.
2. Adding the search phrases to the html head of the document
- meta title
- meta description
Title
Google shows seventy characters for the page title of each page in its standard results. If you have over seventy characters, it cuts off at the closest word, and adds 4 characters ” …” one space and three dots. If adding those characters takes it over the seventy characters, then it cuts off another word from the end of the title.
Therefore if you keep to the maximum 70 characters in the title, you keep the highest level of control over what Google shows, and you have the max number of your characters showing.
The meta title is one of the most important parts of SEO in as much as everything is important. There can only be one “first word” in a title. Do a Google search, and generally you will see the search phrase further to the left, the lower on the search results you look.
So often the content management system adds the business name to the front of their title. The search phrase should come first, then the brand name/website name at the end IF/IF and only if there is room for it.
For ecommerce web sites, you can have a programed formula for the title – the category or product of the page.
Meta description
Google shows 155 characters of the meta description if you search for single/double/triple word phrases. For longer search phrases, Google will show longer snippets. For instance for a five word search phrase it can show up to around 240 characters.
I prefer to keep my meta descriptions to the max 155 characters. Otherwise, Google cuts off the snippet and adds the ” …” space and three dots at the end, thereby cutting off some words. If a long search phrase is searched for, then I let Google pick the snippet from the 155 character meta description, in addition to words on the page.
The meta description is not used for ranking a website (it has zero weighting in the algorithm). But a good meta description will get you clicks.
Use the main search phrases from your title and add a unique selling point for your web site.
A good meta description means a clickable snippet on Google, and more clicks even for lower rankings.
3. Adding to the content of the page
H1
I have a formula that says have an H1 then an opening paragraph. The H1 signifies that the content is starting, and helps distinguish between the header, menus, footer etc of the html page. I have a simplified version of the main search phrase – just one of the keywords of the page title. Simple and readable. Like “SearchMasters – SEO Consulting / SEO Training”
Opening paragraph
So often I find that people are targeting a keyword phrase, yet that phrase is not included in the content of the web page. The EXACT phrase needs to be on the page. Since the website homepage is so powerful, you can have phrases that are related to the title, in the content of the page and get good rankings for them. For instance “Search Engine Optimization” might be in the title of your page, but you would also be able to get ranked for the British spelling “Search Engine Optimisation”, or “Search Engine Optimization Consultant”, or a regional “City Search Engine Optimisation” …
Since you can’t get all your phrases into the opening paragraph, you might require extra paragraphs to keep it readable. You don’t want keyword stuffing.
You need to at least have say 250 characters of text including the main search phrases with no links in that text. The opening paragraph content of a page should be “The Answer”, not directing to another page that has “The Answer”. Further down the document you certainly can have links to other resources.
If you have too small an amount of unique text as compared to header/footer/menu text, then your page is less likely to get cached and ranked on Google. Ecommerce sites
Don’t use your header/footer/menu text as text that you are trying to get a page ranked for. That text is not unique to any one page on your site, and is therefore not proper user information in the eyes of Google.
Unique text
You need unique words around the 1st instance of your search phrase in text on the page. If you are using a manufacturers description for a product or category, add some auto generated text as your opening paragraph
like “Purchase productname on bestshopping, the place for all your cheap productname.”
What does “Unique” mean? Google for multiple words putting quote marks around the search phrase and the word before and after that phrase. That specific phrase ought to be unique for your website. But often you will find that other websites have copied it. So change your opening paragraph formula, or change the words before and after your search phrase, and make the content unique again. When others copy your content Google will often not rank you as high. Sites that are not very powerful will suffer in the rankings more than powerful sites that get copied.
I am often having to rewrite meta descriptions and content for my clients DriveNZ Car Rental Auckland very competitive website. When you rank top 10 on Google for competitive phrases like in the car rental industry, lots more people copy your content, and search engine rankings can often go down when many people copy your websites content.
So there you have it -3 Simple Secrets of Search Engine Optimisation. Follow the simple secrets of SEO, and you will have a good foundation for adding incoming links into your web site and ranking well on Google and the other search engines.
Michael Brandon is a leading New Zealand Search Engine Optimisation consultant training website developers, and web owners, and Search Engine Optimizing websites worldwide.