The Basic of Search Engine Optimisation

A starters guide to what SEO is and a basic step-by-step guide

There is a lot of mystery around what SEO actually is. What are the big players in search engine optimization really doing to get great results in their on-line campaigns? This post will explain the most needed SEO facts, tips and guides to give you a full tutorial on the Basics of SEO. Firstly, you need to be aware of what Google wants from a website and how a search engine chooses which website to place in the ‘SERP’ or search engine results page.

Since the Google ‘Panda’ update in March 2013, content quality is now more important that ever. Every respectable search engine optimisation consultant should be creating rich, engaging content that viewers want to share. Why share it? Because it helps both ‘on-page’ and ‘off-page’ website optimisation. Not only is your website now hosting ‘fresh content’ but you are promoting your website through other websites and gaining that all important ‘back-link’ back to your website, this can also bring you extra website traffic.

SEO at a very Basic Level can be broken down into these core components:

• Guest Blogging
• Article Submissions
• Press Releases
• Directory submission
• Social Media Integration

Before we continue, be aware that a ‘back-link’ is a way of connecting websites to each other and vary greatly in power. For example, if the BBC was to send a hyper link (or back-link) to your website, you would gain Google popularity by being recommended by the most powerful website on the internet, but if my website to hyper link to your website, it would not really count very much as the BBC has far more Domain Authority than mine. SEO overall is determined by three factors, ‘On-page’ (40%), ‘off-page’ (70%) SEO and Social Media strength (10%). Social media signals are generated by being active on social media.

When your website is first launched, there are two key stages that you will need areas that you must focus on if you want to achieve success. The first step is looking at your ‘On-Page’ SEO. This is your websites HTML or PHP coding that can usually be found in the ‘header’ of your websites coding, below are the key ‘on-page’ factors, please note that if you are using the WordPress CMS, you can find your websites header code under the Editor screen in the Appearance tab. Key ‘on-page’ SEO factors:

• Title Tag
• Meta Description
• ‘Alt’ Tags
• H1, H2, H3
• Bold, Italic and Link Text

The second and final stage is your ‘off-page’ SEO, this is your continuous and on going part of website development. This is known as a link building campaign and what you will want to aim for is relevant, ‘high PR’ or ‘Domain Authority’ links coming to your website. For example, if you were trying to advertise a search engine optimisation company that offers only Basic SEO services, you will want to go to Google and search for ‘Basic SEO’. What websites come first and what is that websites PR? An easy way to find this would be to download a Google Chrome and Firefox plugin called ‘SEO Quake’. Using the extension, you can track down and identify a website that is in your field of relevance with a good page rank. With this website being the target, try to e-mail the webmaster and ask if you could do a guest post on their website?

Most website masters are unlikely to say no! The web-master gets some fresh content on the website and the writer gets a back-link from a high PR, relevant source. Simple, repeat the process and continue your back-link strategy until your website ranks the highest on Google for your keyword. Please note that ‘PR’ means ‘Page Rank’ and is a Google created signifier of a websites back-link quality.

Now, for a quick disclaimer. Please be aware that SEO is not a simple process and this mentioned method will provide a small boost but for real success contact a professional. Too many times I have seen businesses that think they are more than capable of SEO because they have read a basic tutorial on a website. If you are interested, contact Link Spider about SEO UK or Small Business SEO.

If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call or send me an email on Mike@linkspider.co.uk.

Thanks for reading and good luck with starting off your websites search engine optimisation process.