Search Engine Basics

What is SEO?

There are a lot of definitions of SEO (spelled Search engine optimisation in the UK, or search engine optimization in the US) but lets face it, SEO in 2013 is about getting free traffic from Google, the most popular search engine in the world.

It’s about KEYWORDS and LINKS. It’s about RELEVANCE and REPUTATION. Search engine optimisation is about a web page being relevant enough for a query, and being trusted enough to rank for it. It’s about ranking for popular keywords for the long term,on merit. You can play by ‘white hat’ rules laid down by Google, or you can choose to ignore those and go ‘black hat’ – a ‘spammer’. But MOST SEO TACTICS still work, for some time, on some level, depending on who’s doing them, and how it’s deployed.

Whichever route you take, know that if Google catches you trying to “modify your rank”, then they will class you a spammer, and your site will be penalised (you wont rank for important keywords). Google does not want you to try and modify your rank. They would prefer you paid PPC to do that. The problem is – traffic from SEO is valuable. REALLY valuable. And FREE, once you’ve pleased Google enough.

In 2013, you need to be aware that what works to improve your rank can also get you penalised (faster, and a lot more noticeably). In particular, Google is currently waging war on unnatural links and manipulative tactics if it detects them.

Welcome to the tightrope that is SEO.

Lets touch on a few simple things to begin with:

To begin with….

If you are just starting out in seo, don’t think you can fool Google about everything all the time. Google has probably seen your tactics before. So, it’s best to keep it simple. GET RELEVANT. GET REPUTABLE. If you are just starting out – you may as well learn how to do it within Google’s Webmaster Guidelines first.
Don’t expect stellar results without a lot of work, and don’t expect them too fast. Expecting too much too fast might get you in trouble.
You don’t pay anything to get into Google, Yahoo or Bing natural, or free listings (SERPS). It’s common for the major search engines to find your website pretty easily by themselves within a few days. This is made so much easier if your website actually ‘pings’ search engines when you update content (via XML sitemaps for instance).
To stay in Google and other search engines, you you really should consider and largely abide by search engine rules and guidelines for inclusion. With experience, and a lot of observation, you can learn which rules can be bent, and which tactics are short term and perhaps, should be avoided.
Google ranks websites by the number and quality of incoming links to a site from other websites (amongst hundreds of other metrics). Generally speaking, a link from a page to another page is viewed in Google “eyes” as a vote for that page the link points to. The more votes a page gets, the more trusted a page can become, and the higher Google will rank it – in theory. Rankings are HUGELY affected by how much Google ultimately trusts the DOMAIN the page is on.
I’ve always thought if you are serious about ranking – do so with ORIGINAL COPY. It’s clear – search engines reward good content it hasn’t found before. It indexes it blisteringly fast, for a start. So – make sure each of your pages has content you have written specifically for that page – and you won’t need to jump through hoops to get it ranking.
If you have original quality content on a site, you also have a chance of generating inbound quality links (IBL). If your content is found on other websites, you will find it hard to get links, and it probably will not rank very well as Google favours diversity in it’s results. If you have decent original content on your site, you can let authority websites, those with online business authority, know about it, and they might link to you – this is called a quality backlink.
Search engines need to understand a link is a link. Links can be designed to be ignored by search engines (the attribute nofollow effectively cancels out a link, for instance)
Search engines can also find your site by other web sites linking to it. You can also submit your site to search engines direct, but I haven’t submitted my site to a search engine in the last 10 years – you probably don’t need to do that.
Google spiders a link to your home page, finds your site, and crawls and indexes the home page of your site, and will come back to spider the rest of your website if all your pages are linked together (in almost any way).
Many think Google will not allow new websites to rank well for competitive terms until the web address “ages” and acquires “trust” in Google – I think this depends on the quality of the incoming links. Sometimes your site will rank high for a while then disappear for months. This is called the “honeymoon period”.
Google WILL classify your site when it crawls and indexes your site – and this classification can have a DRASTIC affect on your rankings – it’s important for Google to work out WHAT YOUR ULTIMATE INTENT IS – do you want to classified as an affiliate site made ‘just for Google’, a domain holding page, or a small business website with a real purpose? Ensure you don’t confuse Google by being explicit with all the signals you can – to show on your website you are a real business, and your INTENT is genuine. NOTE – If a page exists only to make money from Google’s free traffic – Google calls this spam.
To rank for specific keyword searches, you generally need to have the words on your page (not necessarily altogether, but it helps) – ultimately it is all dependent on the competition for the term you are targeting) or in links pointing to your page/site.
As a result of other quality sites linking to your site, the site now has a certain amount of Pagerank that is shared with all the internal pages that make up your website that will in future help determine where this page ranks.
Yes, you need to build links to your site to acquire more Google Juice. Google is a links based search engine – it does not quite understand ‘good’ content – but it does understand ‘popular’ content.
When you have Google Juice or Heat, try and spread it throughout your site by ensuring all your pages are linked together
I think your external links to to other sites should probably be on your single pages, the pages receiving all your Google Juice once it’s been “soaked up” by the higher pages in your site (the home page, your category pages).It’s not JUST a numbers game, though. One link from a “trusted authority” site in Google could be all you need. Of course, the more “trusted” links you build, the more trust Google will have in your site. it’s pretty clear that you need MULTIPLE trusted links from MULTIPLE trusted websites to get the most from Google.
Try and get links within page text pointing to your site with keywords in it – not, for instance, in blogrolls or sitewide links. Try to ensure the links are not obviously “machine generated” ie site-wide links on forums or directories. Get links from pages, that in turn, have a lot of links to them.
Internally, consider linking to your other pages by linking to them within text – I usually only do this when it is relevant – and recently, I’ll link to relevant pages when the keyword is in the title elements of both pages. I don’t really go in for auto-generating links at all. Google has penalised sites for using particular auto link plugins, for instance.
Linking to a page with actual key-phrases in the link help a great deal in all search engines when you want to feature for specific key-terms. ie “seo scotland” as opposed to http://www.hobo-web.co.uk or “click here“.
I think the anchor text links in internal navigation is still valuable – but keep it natural. Google needs links to find your pages. Don’t underestimate the value of a clever internal link keyword-rich architecture and be sure to understand for instance how many words Google counts in a link, but don’t overdo it.
Search engines like Google ‘spider’ or ‘crawl’ your entire site by following all the links on your site to new pages, much as a human would click on the links of your pages. Google will crawl and index your pages, and within a few days normally, begin to return your pages in search results (SERPS)
After a while, Google will know about your pages, and keep the ones it deems ‘useful’ – pages with original content, or pages with a lot of links to them . Ideally you will have unique pages, with unique page titles and unique page descriptions if you deem to use the latter – most search engines don’t use the meta description when actually ranking your page for specific keyword searches if not relevant – I don’t worry about meta keywords these days.
Google chews over your site, analysing text content and links
If you have a lot of duplicate crap found on other websites Google knows about, Google will ignore your page. If your site has spammy signals. Google will penalise it.
You don’t need to keyword stuff your text and look dyslexic to beat the competition. Generally it’s good to have keywords in links, page titles and text content. There is no ideal amount of text – no magic keyword density. Keyword stuffing is a tricky business.
I prefer to make sure I have as many UNIQUE relevant words on the page.
If you link out to irrelevant sites, Google may ignore the page, too – but again, it depends on the site in question. Who you link to, or HOW you link to, REALLY DOES MATTER – I expect Google to use your linking practices as a potential means by which to classify your site. Affiliate sites for example don’t do well in Google these days without some good quality backlinks.
Many SEOs think who you actually link out to (and who links to you) helps determine a topical community of sites in any field, or a hub of authority. Quite simply, you want to be in that hub, at the centre if possible (however unlikely), but at least in it. I like to think of this one as a good thing to remember in the future as search engines get even better at determining topical relevancy of pages, but I have never really seen any granular ranking benefit (for the page in question) from linking out.
Original content is king and will attract a “natural link growth” – in Google’s opinion. Too many incoming links too fast might devalue your site, but again. I usually err on the safe side – I go for massive diversity in my links – to make them look more natural. Actually, I go for natural links in 2013 full stop. Google can devalue whole sites, individual pages, template generated links and individual links if Google deems them “unnecessary”.
Google knows who links to you, the “quality” of those links, and who you link to.
Google decides which pages on your site are important or most relevant. You can help Google by linking to your important pages.
It is of paramount importance you spread all that Google juice to your sales keyword / phrase rich sales pages, and as much remains to the rest of the site pages, so Google does not”demote” starved pages into it’s reserves, or “supplementals”.
Consider linking to important pages on your site from your home page, and via the template navigation on the site.
Focus on RELEVANCE first. Then get REPUTABLE. The key to ranking in Google is actually pretty simple.
Every few months Google changes it’s algorithm to punish sloppy optimisation or industrial manipulation. Google Panda and Google Penguin are two such updates, but the important thing is to understand Google changes it’s algorithms to control it’s listings pages. The art of SEO is to rank without tripping these algorithms – and that is tricky!

Keyword Research

The first step in any seo campaign is to do some keyword research. There are many tools on the web to help with basic keyword research (including the free Google Keyword Research Tool and SEMRUSH). You can use these tools to quickly identify opportunities to get more traffic:

Page Title Tag

<title>What Is The Best Title Tag For Google?</title>

The page title tag (or HTML Title Element) is arguably the most important on page seo factor. Keywords in page titles can HELP your pages rank higher in Google results pages (SERPS). The page title is also often used by Google as the title of a search snippet link in search engine results pages.

For me, a perfect title tag in Google is dependant on a number of factors;

The page title is highly relevant to the page it refers to, it will probably be displayed in a web browsers window title bar, and the clickable search snippet link in Google, Bing & other search engines. The title is the “crown” of a keyword targeted article with important keyword featuring AT LEAST ONCE, as all search enignes place a lot of weight in what words are contained within this html element.
Google displays as many characters as it can fit into ”a block element that’s 512px wide and doesn’t exceed 1 line of text”. So – THERE IS NO AMOUNT OF CHARACTERS any seo can lay down as exact best practice to GUARANTEE your title will display, in full in Google, at least. Ultimately – only the characters and words you use will determine if your entire page title will be seen in a Google search snippet. Google used to count 70 characters in a title – but not in 2012. If you want to ENSURE your full title tag shows in Google SERPS, stick to about 65 characters. I have seen ‘up-to’ 69 characters in 2012 – but as I said – it depends on the characters you use.
Google will INDEX perhaps 1000s of characters in a title… but no-one knows exactly how many characters or words Google will actually count AS a TITLE when determining relevance for ranking purposes. It is a very hard thing to try to isolate accurately. I have had ranking success with longer titles – much longer titles – Google certainly reads ALL the words in your page title (unless you are spamming it silly, of course).
You can probably fit up to 12 words that will be counted as part of a page title, and consider using your important keywords in the first 8 words.
Some page titles do better with a call to action – one which reflects exactly a searcher’s intent (e.g. to learn something, or buy something, or hire something. Remember this is your hook in search engines, if Google chooses to use your page title in its search snippet, and there is now a lot of competing pages out there!
When optimising a title, you are looking to rank for as many terms as possible, without keyword stuffing your title. Often, the best bet is to optimise for a particular phrase (or phrases) – and take a more long-tail approach. Yes – that does mean more pages on your site – that’s the reality in 2012. Content. Content. Content.
The perfect title tag on a page is unique to other pages on the site. In light of Google Panda, an algorithm that looks for a ‘quality’ in sites, you REALLY need to make your page titles UNIQUE, and minimise any duplication, especially on larger sites.
I like to make sure my keywords feature as early as possible in a title tag but the important thing is to have important keywords and key phrases in your page title tag SOMEWHERE.
For me, when SEO is more important than branding, the company name goes at the end of the tag, and I use a variety of dividers to separate as no one way performs best. If you have a recognisable brand – then there is an argument for putting this at the front of titles.
I like to think I write titles for search engines AND humans.
Know that Google tweaks everything regularly – why not what the perfect title keys off? So MIX it up…
Don’t obsess! Natural is probably better, and will only get better as engines evolve. As I said – these days – I optimise for key-phrases, rather than just keywords.
Generally speaking, the more domain trust/authority your SITE has in Google, the easier it is for a new page to rank for something. So bear that in mind. THere is only so much you can do with your page titles – your websites rankings in Google are a LOT more to do with OFFSITE factors than ONSITE ones.
Also bear in mind, in 2012, the html title element you choose for your page, may not be what Google chooses to include in your SERP snippet. The search snippet title and description is very much QUERY dependant these days. Google often chooses what it thinks is the most relevant title for your search snippet, and it can use information from your page, or in links to that page, to create a very different SERP snippet title.
Click through rate is something that is likely measured by Google when ranking pages (Bing say they use it too, and they now power Yahoo), so it is really worth considering whether you are best optimising your page titles for click-through rate or optimising for more search engine rankings.
Google has been recorded recently discussing an ‘over-optimisation’ penalty. I would imagine keyword stuffing your page titles could be one area they look at.
Remember….think ‘keyword phrase‘ rather than ‘keyword‘, ‘keyword‘ ,’keyword‘…

Meta Keywords

<meta name=”Keywords” content=”seo, search engine optimisation, optimization”>

A bastian of crap and unethical search engine optimisation companies – the meta-keywords tag. How many crap seo companies mention cleaning and optimising this tag in their presentations? Companies that waste time on these waste clients money.

I have one piece of advice with the meta keyword tag, which like the title tag, goes in the head section of your web page, forget about them.

If you are relying on meta-keyword optimisation to rank for terms, your dead in the water. From what I see, Google + Bing ignores meta keywords – or at least places no weight in them to rank pages. Yahoo may read them, but really, a seo has more important things to worry about than this nonsense.

Meta Description

Like the title element and unlike the meta keywords tag, this one is important, both from a human and search engine perspective.

<meta name=”Description” content=”Get your site on the first page of Google,
Yahoo and Bing too, using simple seo. Call us on 0845 094 0839. A company based in Scotland.” />

Forget whether or not to put your keyword in it, make it relevant to a searcher and write it for humans, not search engines. If you want to have this 20 word snippet which accurately describes the page you have optimised for one or two keyword phrases when people use Google to search, make sure the keyword is in there.

I must say, I normally do include the keyword in the description as this usually gets it in your serp snippet, but I think it would be a fair guess to think more trusted sites would benefit more from any boost a keyword in the meta description tag might have, than an untrusted site would.

Google looks at the description but there is debate whether it actually uses the description tag to rank sites. I think they might at some level, but again, a very weak signal. I certainly don’t know of an example that clearly shows a meta description helping a page rank.