Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – What? How? Huh?

So you’ve probably heard about search engine optimisation but want to understand the basics. Even if you haven’t, don’t fear, I’ll explain all below.

What is SEO?

Put simply, search engine optimisation is the art of climbing higher in search engine rankings. For clarity, it has nothing to do with paid listings (sometimes at the top and always in a column down the right of Google results pages). It is a science far more expansive than pay per click, there are a number external factors that one can’t control that factor into the success of a campaign. That said, there are are many more factors that one can control. It is often a cumulative effect of several measures that leads to search engine success rather than one magic bullet.

Choose keywords wisely

Of course, it is important to consider the keywords you want to rank highly for, it is no good ranking highly for “premium hotels” if everybody searches using the term “luxury hotels”. Also, remember, focussing on branded keywords, such as “Letoh’s luxury hotels” is not particularly useful, by optimising for luxury hotels, it would be easy for a Letoh (as an example company) to rank for the branded keyword variant anyway. Also, someone already has to know your company to make that kind of search. Part of the purpose of SEO is for new customers to find you. Working out keywords need not and should not be guesswork, but I will cover keyword research in another post.

You can’t guarantee success? Why bother then?

As I said above, while noone can guarantee success, there are so many factors to look at that one can usually find a plethora of changes, some of which will near certainly result in improvement. This is also a good time to mention that you should be extremely weary of companies that offer a “number 1 on Google” service. Which brings me conveniently onto my next topic:

Are there underhand methods to achieve SEO success?

In a word, yes. There are many. These methods are known in the industry as blackhat. Legitimate methods are known as… can you guess? Whitehat.

It gets a little bit more intricate, as there are some methods that aren’t outright blackhat, but don’t strictly benefit users, so aren’t whitehat either. These are lovingly known as greyhat!

Our basic recommendation is to steer clear of blackhat, as these methods risk getting you permanently banned or penalised by search engines. Taking the middle path is generally the best approach, taking care to keep the risk levels to a minimum.

How does SEO work?

I said I would mention keywords again, and this is it. Keywords are a cornerstone of SEO and play a role in nearly every aspect.

SEO can be divided into onsite and offsite factors. Onsite work is anything that is done to the site itself. Modifying the code to make it more search engine friendly, inserting keywords into the various site elements (such as headings, page title and meta content).

Offsite factors include the number and quality of links pointing to your site from other sites (and what words they do this with, otherwise known as ‘anchor text’).

Anchor text is an important onsite factor too, which led to us creating the weblaunch SEO module this helps you interweave your pages to ensure search engines store your whole site rather than only parts of the content.

Anyhow, that’s the basic jist of it, and of course with more than 240 known factors being analysed by the search engines, there is a huge amount to consider. I will into techniques in coming posts.