SEO 101. Taking the plunge into search engine optimisation

So once you've created a great looking website with good design, easy to use menus and built using the latest content management software this is not time to sit back, relax and be content with your work!! 

Your next challenge is to get your website noticed...  There is a lot of myth and legend surrounding the mysteries of search engine optimisation, but, actually, it's all pretty straight forward.  

Here are my top tips on getting the SEO basics right:

1.  Start by checking out your competitors!  Goto their websites, read their content, titles, headings and main text and assess how well they are getting their message out.

If you want to delve deeper, use the "View Source" menu item to look at the HTML of the webpages and jot down page titles, meta description and meta keywords that you will find listed in the top few lines .

2.  Then start thinking about content optimisation of your own site - write down your USPs (unique selling points) - and list the keywords and key phrases which appear most frequently in your list of USPs.

3.  Now here's the clever bit, run your keywords and keyphrases through Google's Keyword Tool and it will tell you how popular / good your key phrases are and will rank alternative suggestions for you to consider:

 4. Once you've identified your key phrases, then the next task is to embed these into your web page HTML.  If you are happy to do this yourself then repeat the key-phrases in titles, headings, text and behind images uses ALT tags.

 5.  and write the key phrases into your content using the guidelines listed in the slide. 

 If all this is a bit daunting, then now could be a good time to contact your web designer or seo consultant...  

6.  I also found the seo tools listed on the Build-Recipricol-Links website to be very useful in refining keyword density and checking your page rank.

SEO tends to be a very iterative process, so once you've got some results then go back and refine, refine and refine again:-)

There are also handy  tools to report on Page Rank and assess Link Popularity, but I'll write more on this my next post.

Please contact me if you would like a copy of the full powerpoint slides previewed in this article.

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