I’ve recently discovered the power of search engine optimisation. In the past six months, I used a generous free credit from Google Adwords to run a number of online campaigns to gain fresh traffic to my website. As it turns out, it costs quite a bit of money (once the free credit runs out) to keep running Adwords campaigns, and I’ve found they’re not as effective as SEO.
A number of online studies claim that 75% of people click on a search engine result (organic result) as opposed to a paid advertisement (pay per click), and with some basic optimisation to your website code, you can target this 75% market (I think it’s more like 90%) for free!
From reading a couple of basic tutorials, and some experimentation, I’ve managed to get my website from not showing up in google results (at least in the first 50 pages), to showing up on the first page on some keywords. Here’s a list of some basic steps;
- The first, and most important step is to gather some important keyword phrases related to your website. Talk to a number of people and ask them “if you wanted to search google for my product/service, what would you type in google?”. Try and limit keyword phrases to about 3 or 4 words. You may be surprised to what some people may type in to find your product/service.
- Try out some of the collected keyword phrases, and see what the results are like. Do they present your direct competitors? Many people searching for a local service will also put in their local town/area, so try a few keyword phrases with the location included in the phrase.
- Once you have identified your likely keyword phrases, it’s time to put them into your website content. The single most important change that I have experienced, is putting your keyword phrases into the <title> tag in your html. Don’t jam your keyword phrases into the <title> tag, but add a couple and consider using a “|” (pipe) to seperate them. Don’t forget to add your region/location to the <title> tag too!
- Ensure that your keyword phrases also appear in the general website content as well (inside the <h1> tag is also helpful). Important keyword phrases should be duplicated a couple of times throughout the page to emphasise the relevance.