Search engine optimisation is something I find fascinating – and also quite difficult to comprehend.
In our online media lecture this week, icrossing’s Antony Mayfield explained to us – better than anyone else has ever managed before – how Google works and how search engine optimisation operates.
Brilliant.
Yet, whilst I understood the pretty networking diagrams (or solar system replicas) at the time, looking back on it, I’m still not sure I can comprehend the web universe and how we are trying to predict the search keywords of the internet nation.
Looking at my sad blog stats, I decided something must be done to expand my knowledge and make search engine optimisation easy. So I came up with 5 steps, which helped me to understand…….
1. Understand the jargon
A search engine like Google indexes web sites using spiders and crawlers to sniff out the sites and index them accordingly .
There are two types of search results: natural and sponsered (self-explanatory).
White hat or black hat: It sounds like something from Harry Potter but these strange terms relate to how search engines seperate good and bad content ie. spam.
2. Use the right keywords in the right places
Include keywords in the title of your web page. Think about what key search words you would use to find your story/blog etc, and place them in prominate position: headlines and standfirsts. You can be clever with puns further down in your article.
3. Be careful with your content
If you use keywords too many times, spiders and crawlers may think the site is spam. This is known as keyword stuffing and is used by spamers (although you would have to use a lot of keywords). Apparently too much Flash content means sites rank badly on Google. Red Cardinal advises providing a text-based alternative. Also, some people don’t have Flash installed and so could find it difficult to see your fancy work anyway.
4. Link, link, link
It seems your site is only as good as its links.
Search engines use link analysis to index your site. For example, how many other pages link to your site and the calibre of these sites. Linking to other sites with similar or related content is also worthwhile.
5. Build your network
With all this chatter about Twitter, it seems these types of tools are the ideal way of promoting your content. Although as we have been warned, they are useless unless you have a network. And building networks take time. Start with the people around you. Be active in sharing and commenting on other blogs.
This is an introductory post about search engine optimisation (SEO) and my first attempt to understand it. Please send me any hints, tips or alterations. It will really help me out.
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2 Comments
November 24, 2008 at 9:39 am
Nice to learn SEO basic techniques
November 24, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Nice! Thanks for sharing