Search Engine Optimisation - Website Design & Management - Domain Names & Hosting
The SEO Process
What happens to your site?Once your site has been designed, the normal process is to begin optimising the site so it starts to work it's way up the search engine rankings for your keyword phrase(s). This is not always a guaranteed process, and there is much work involved in getting a site to perform well. A great deal of patience is required when optimising a website as the search engine companies keep the exact details of how to rank well a closely guarded secret. There is however a process that is followed, that will usually return better results than an un-optimised site. The biggest step is preparing your website to be optimised. Many sites when designed don't take these steps into consideration and that is why they don't rank well.
The basic process I follow is outlined below. This is by no means an extensive outline of what is done, merely the basics to get a site on the way to working properly. If I divulged all my secrets then i'd be out of a job!
1. Optimising The Meta Tags
The first stage is to analyze the keyword phrases your website will target. These then need to be implemented throughout your website. The easiest way to do this is by inserting the correct meta tags in the web page coding.
Title: What your site is called in the search engine and directory listings
Description: A brief, usually one line, keyword rich description about your site
Keyword: A collection of keywords on each page, related to the main focus of the site
Alt tags: Alternate image tags – when a mouse is hovered over an image, the 'alt text' is what appears
These tags all should contain keywords and phrases related to the images and the page content.
This process needs to be followed through on every page of your site, each optimised for it's own set of keywords and phrases, based on the content that is listed on each page. Some tweaking of the page content is usually required at this point to fully optimised the web page (adding in more keyword phrases etc). The larger the site, the more time is needed at this point.
2. Search Engine And Directory Submission
Once the site's tags have been optimised, and the page content has a good keyword density, the next step is to begin submitting your website to as many online directories and search engines as is possible. This not only increases the exposure of your website, it also has another effect - it assists your website to rank better. Sites that link to you increase your importancy, and thus be seen as being more important in the search engine companies eyes. Quality is the key here though, not quantity. You want relevant websites to link to you, not just anyone.
This is an ongoing process – as I come across new sites, I will add your site to them. I have a comprehensive list, but there are always new sites emerging.
Search Engines:
Websites like Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, Ask.com, Excite.com and MyWay.com that people use to find products or services that they are after.
Directories:
Places that list your site amongst many others and provide an in-bound link to it. Websites like Dmoz.org, Directory.com.au, Aussieroo.com.au, Web-directory-australia.info are just a few that are included in this category.
With this process, also comes reciprocal linking (your site linking to another, and them linking back). Inevitably this will require some minor updating of your website to add links to partners websites etc. Some in the SEO industry believe there is no use in reciprocal linking (as the links aren't worth a much as a one way in-bound link), but they are still valuable as a means to get your website's popularity increasing.
3. The Waiting Game
Once all the above has been done, the site is left for a little while to settle in, and get indexed by the major search engines. This is to see how well the initial optimisation has performed. Depending on the outcome, further updating and tweaking of the sites content and tags is usually needed. From then on the site is usually reviewed on a monthly basis and general upkeeping is maintained. Results can take from 1-6 months to show results, although most changes are picked up quite quickly, usually in a matter of weeks.
Each search engine has its own requirements and conditions, so changes might work well in one but not another. The aim is to reach a happy medium amongst them all initially, and then perform minor tweaks down the track. Past experience has shown that Yahoo and MSN are the quickest to pick up results and rank well for clients, Google a short time after (as it's much more competitive), and it doesn't like new sites as much. Over time, your website should gradually increase in its ranking, and from time to time it may also fluctuate up and down depending on the search engine companies and if they are updating their databases.
