Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Web Marketing Help - From FSI (SEO Company in Leeds)

Brief introduction to SEO and website marketing for beginners

Basics of search engine optimisation: In order to convey quickly some basic guidance on, and help with, search engine optimisation and web traffic marketing we thought we'd take a common example of exactly how not to do it.

Take a key phrase commonly found in prominent contextual places on web sites, but which you would never dream of using as a Google search term, and type it into Google. We chose “Welcome to our website”.

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If you have a look at the top results in Google you will probably see that they have a few things in common.

1. Title Tag: Look in the blue bar at the top of the page - it is very likely that you will find our keywords here. This information is held in the title tag, and search engines expect to find highly contextual information in there, and therefore attribute a high level of importance to what you place here.
2. H1 Tag: Look at the first level, main or top heading. If the web designer has used a <h1> tag here (which would be right), then search engines will also give high contextual importance to the content. If the designer has used a lower level tag here such as <h2>, then the content would be given a lower level of importance. Personally, if I had to use a phrase such as “Welcome to our website”, I would put it in the lowest level tags possible, so that Google knows that it is not contextually important.
3. First P Tag: Lastly, have a look at the beginning of the first paragraph - our key phrase could be found here as well. The words you use at the start of your first paragraph should be highly contextual and preferably convey literally and succinctly the purpose and subject matter of your website or website page.

Of course, we haven't even scratched the surface here where good techniques are concerned. Nonetheless you can now congratulate yourself that you understand more about the fundamentals of search engine optimisation and web traffic marketing than the 10s, perhaps even 100s, of thousands of web designers, developers and copy writers whose sites came up in your Google results.

Three more SEO tips

1) Find out what search engines see when they look at your site

Use iWebTool Spider View to find out what search engines see when they look at your site. Enter your website address/domain name (e.g. foursquareinnovations.co.uk) and any keywords you want to check for

Related Information: W3C website validation and quality checking tools

2) Find your Google Page Rank

Knowing your Google Page Rank gives you a good indication of how important the search engine thinks your website is. They also give a good indication of whether your website has sufficient sites linking to it (backlinks), and the quality of those links. However, be aware that Google Page Ranks do not provide an accurate indication of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) rankings for your website in Google, Yahoo or MSN.

If you install the Google Toolbar then you will be able to see the Google page rank of every web page you visit, as well as the Google page rank of the various web pages on your website. The link below provides the latest version of the free Mozilla Firefox web browser with the Google Toolbar plugin. If you have Firefox already installed or if you use Internet Explorer, you can still install the toolbar from this location:

  

3) Increase backlinks to your site

Backlinks to your site are useful for increasing your Page Ranking (PR) with the Search Engines. Be sure to link to other webpages as well as your homepage, as these will benefit too. Add a few at a time to avoid the Spike - search engines won't like you so much if your backlinks increase dramatically all in one go.

Try to prioritise obtaining backlinks from websites with higher Page Ranks. Blogging can be especially useful for this.

You can also start to build up the backlinks to your website, by submitting your details to a few of the web directories and classifieds websites listed on our business directories page.

You can check the backlinks to your website and perform numerous other SEO tests here.

Related Information about SEO:

SEO: an integrated approach (presentation opens in a new window)

SEO test page for Jewish Matchmaking and Dating Sites

Internet marketing tips - onsite SEO (downloadable pdf opens in a new Window)

SEO training for onsite optimisation

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