Posted: Thu, March 23, 2006
How does Search Engine Optimisation work?
by Matt Trimmer
Search marketing is now widely recognised as a highly effective way of reaching customers online. Last year, over £2 Billion was spent globally in online marketing and the figures are set to soar.
More companies with an online presence are turning to search marketing to reach prospective customers, generate traffic to their site and convert them into sales.
So, how does it all work? If you're considering investing a percentage of your hard earned marketing budget on search marketing you should have a basic understanding of where it's going and how
it works. Most search marketing companies talk about improved web site and page ranking but what exactly does that mean? What you want is to increase traffic to your site, improve sales and raise the
brand. How does that happen?
I always think of "ranking" on crawling search engines as just one of four steps in generating traffic and conversions in the process of successful Search Engine Optimisation. Your site, like every
other site, needs not only to be ranked by search engines but found, read, indexed and then ranked by crawling search engines.
Don't be afraid of crawling search engines, spiders and robots
Notice I talk about crawling search engines. What on earth are these? Actually you'll have heard of most of them, there really aren't that many and certainly the only ones you need to worry about, as
far as traffic is concerned, are Google, Yahoo, MSN, (Ask Jeeves) Teoma and Mirago. Each search engine generally has a portal component which is the bit consumers visit to conduct their searches
and a crawling component called the robot or spider. So each of the search engines I mentioned above has its own robot, each uniquely named Googlebot, Slurp, MSNbot, Teoma and Henry
respectively.
So how does your site get found?
Well, robots work by following links. So getting a link from an established site to your site is vital. You can also see if search engines know about your site already by using the command
site:www.yoursite.co.uk in the search box at Google for example. This asks the search engine to retrieve all the pages it has in its database (or index) from your domain. This allows you to see which
pages the search engines know about. If you are not listed you need to establish links - ask friends, colleagues and business associates and submit your site at DMOZ and the Yahoo directories (note
this is different to the Yahoo search engine) . You can also submit your site for crawling at most search engines, but be aware; submitting for crawling is not as good and being found for crawling!
So, how about being read and indexed?
Well, again the command site:www.mysite.co.uk on Google and on other search engines can really serve you well. Have a look at what text the search engines are indexing and the see if the links
work. This can tell you a lot about how well read and understood your site is. One of the most important things you can do to improve your search engine readability is to use a unique, descriptive
HTML Title on every page of your website. Also use a Description and Abstract Meta Tag (information inserted into the "head" area of your web pages) and remember that Title and Meta tags have two
purposes. The first purpose is to compel users to click through from a search page to your website. Such Titles and Meta Tags are often displayed to users using search engines and so using promotional
text such as "Free Delivery" or real unique selling points entice users to click through. The second purpose is ranking - so use keywords in the Title and Meta tags that have potential to generate the right
kind of traffic to your site, but match the content of each page.
So what's the key to good ranking?
The key to ranking is a great site with great content and an enviable back linking structure that has been established organically because other site owners have felt it important and useful to link to
your site. Search engines really look for sites that are part of a thematic community and sites that rank the best are those that demonstrate authority over their subject matter with important, fresh,
content, referenced by other websites active in the same community.
About the author:
Matt Trimmer is the Managing Director of ivantage.co.uk, a company that helps clients improve their online profitability through traffic
generation, traffic analysis, traffic conversion and traffic protection.
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editor@itwales.com .
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