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07:40
Sajid Ali
SEO (or search engine optimisation) can seem complicated but there are quite a few things that you can do with your website that are easy and will help you get better results from Google and the other search engines. Look at your website with a fresh set of eyes and see how you can uses these simple - but effective - SEO techniques for beginners.
1. Check your page titles
Think of the titles of each of your pages as the headline on a classified advert.
Do a quick search on Google for site: followed by your own domain name (don't leave a space after the colon).
Then look at the results.
The blue clickable links are your page titles. They should make the content of each page crystal clear. You've only got a handful of seconds to grab your potential visitor's attention. If you waste that time by repeating your company name then, unless you're already a household name, that's not going to help.
If your page title doesn't make your potential visitor want to click through to your site to find out more, you need to change it so that it does.
Google allows you just over 60 characters to do this, including spaces and other punctuation.
Use as much of this as makes sense without stuffing your title full of keywords.
And remember that anything over this limit will get cut off and won't show in the search results.
2. Check your meta descriptions
We're still on stuff that needs to be right before people will reach your site.
The meta description isn't visible on your website. But - if it's present - there's a good chance that Google will use it as the description below your title in the search results listing.
If your site uses the popular Wordpress publishing platform, you need to be aware that this isn't really addressed by the off-the-shelf program. You'll need a Wordpress SEO plugin to be able to easily control the description that's shown. If you've seen descriptions that start with a date and are full of ellipsis (those three dots...) then you've probably seen a non-SEO'd Wordpress site.
You'll need to apply the same test to the meta descriptions as your main page titles.
Ask yourself whether or not they would encourage you to click on the link?
If the answer is "yes" then you're probably OK. If the answer is "no" then you need to go away and do some work on your descriptions.
3. Check your page headline
This one only applies once people have reached your site.
There's some code in your web page which denotes a page headline. These are numbered in importance from 1 through to 6. So a number 1 headline is more important than a number 2 headline. And so on.
Again, if you're trying to SEO Wordpress, you may have to check your theme and get it changed if it doesn't use headlines by default. A lot of designers are a bit "purist" about this and think that it sullies their design integrity.
The problem is that if you don't have at least one headline, Google is left a bit in the dark as to what your page is about. And a confused computer tends to do much the same as a confused human - put off dealing with the page and go onto something easier. Which is probably your competitor.
1. Check your page titles
Think of the titles of each of your pages as the headline on a classified advert.
Do a quick search on Google for site: followed by your own domain name (don't leave a space after the colon).
Then look at the results.
The blue clickable links are your page titles. They should make the content of each page crystal clear. You've only got a handful of seconds to grab your potential visitor's attention. If you waste that time by repeating your company name then, unless you're already a household name, that's not going to help.
If your page title doesn't make your potential visitor want to click through to your site to find out more, you need to change it so that it does.
Google allows you just over 60 characters to do this, including spaces and other punctuation.
Use as much of this as makes sense without stuffing your title full of keywords.
And remember that anything over this limit will get cut off and won't show in the search results.
2. Check your meta descriptions
We're still on stuff that needs to be right before people will reach your site.
The meta description isn't visible on your website. But - if it's present - there's a good chance that Google will use it as the description below your title in the search results listing.
If your site uses the popular Wordpress publishing platform, you need to be aware that this isn't really addressed by the off-the-shelf program. You'll need a Wordpress SEO plugin to be able to easily control the description that's shown. If you've seen descriptions that start with a date and are full of ellipsis (those three dots...) then you've probably seen a non-SEO'd Wordpress site.
You'll need to apply the same test to the meta descriptions as your main page titles.
Ask yourself whether or not they would encourage you to click on the link?
If the answer is "yes" then you're probably OK. If the answer is "no" then you need to go away and do some work on your descriptions.
3. Check your page headline
This one only applies once people have reached your site.
There's some code in your web page which denotes a page headline. These are numbered in importance from 1 through to 6. So a number 1 headline is more important than a number 2 headline. And so on.
Again, if you're trying to SEO Wordpress, you may have to check your theme and get it changed if it doesn't use headlines by default. A lot of designers are a bit "purist" about this and think that it sullies their design integrity.
The problem is that if you don't have at least one headline, Google is left a bit in the dark as to what your page is about. And a confused computer tends to do much the same as a confused human - put off dealing with the page and go onto something easier. Which is probably your competitor.
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