Search Engines

One of the most frequently asked questions from web site owners is, Why can't my site be found on Google?”

People know it’s important to appear at the top of search engine results but they just don’t know why it doesn’t happen to them.
They may well be in awe of the ‘black arts’ of search engine optimisation or puzzled by the complexity of it all.

If they’re unlucky they will have paid out money to some 'snake oil salesman' guaranteeing to get them to the top in 48 hours - and been sorely disappointed with the lack of traffic that results. Most search engine optimizers are highly ethical, professional people but unsurprisingly they tend to keep their cards close to their chest.

So what is the web site owner to do to compete? The big secret is there is no big secret

It’s true: the ‘big secret’ of search engine optimisation is that there is no big secret. It is all about understanding what is going on, followed by the hard work and attention to detail that are common to many business activities.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that there are three pieces of software that together make up a search engine - the Spider software, the Index software and the Query software. If you understand what these three do, then you have the foundation for getting your web site to the top of the search engines.

Here’s what the three types of software do:

• The Spider software ‘crawls the web looking for new pages to collect and add to the search engine indices’. This is a metaphor. In reality, the spider doesn’t do any ‘crawling’ and doesn’t ‘visit’ any web pages. It requests pages from a web site in the same way as Microsoft Explorer, or Firefox or whatever browser you use requests pages to display on your screen. The difference is that the spider doesn’t collect images or fancy designs - it is only interested in text and links AND the URL, (for example, http://www.everythingexmoor.org.uk/index.php) from which they come: it doesn’t display anything and it gets as much information as it can in the shortest time possible. A spider loves links because they lead it to other web pages that have the things that it loves, guess what? more text, links and URLs!
  
• The Index software catches everything the Spider can throw at it (yes, that’s another metaphor). The index makes sense of the mass of text, links and URLs using what is called an algorithm - a complex mathematical formula that indexes the words, the pairs of words and so on. Essentially, an algorithm analyses the pages and links for word combinations and assigns scores that allow the search engine to judge how important the page (and URL) might be to the person that is searching. And of course it stores all of this information and makes it available to people who are searching.
• The Query software is what you see when you use a search engine - it is the front end that everybody thinks of as a search engine. It may look simple but it presents the results of all the remarkable search engine software that works away invisibly on our behalf. The main feature of the query software is the box into which people type their search terms. Type in your words, hit search and the search engine will try to match your words with the best web pages in can find through searching the web. But this too is a metaphor and perhaps the most important one. The query software doesn’t search the web - it checks the records that have been created by its own index software. And those records have been made possible by the raw material the spider software collects.

You need to understand is that the search engine has done all the hard work of collecting and analysing web pages, BUT it only makes that information available when someone does a search by entering words in the search box and hitting return.

The words people use when they search therefore determine the results the search engine presents. They are called keywords - that might sound fancy but keywords are simply ‘the words people use when they search’.

The secret of writing great online copy is simple: use keywords - the words people use when they search - in your copy.

The reasons for this are two fold:

1. If you use in your copy, page titles, descriptions and links the words people use when they search, then you will score well in search engine results and more people will find your site.

2. The language you use will be appropriate to your audience. As any seasoned direct marketer will tell you, speak to people in their own language and they will be more likely to buy from you.

That of course begs the question, “How do you find your best keywords”? If you want to succeed online, you’ve got to spend enough time and energy discovering the words your customers really use whey they search. You will need not just 20-30 keywords, you’ll need hundreds - and many of the most successful online companies will have thousands of keywords.

Here are the 3 steps involved:

Step 1 - Start with a common word or phrase that is appropriate to your business. Start simple. Your starting point does not need to be clever or creative. All you need is a common word or phrase relevant to your business. If you were researching for the market for chocolate, a good starting point would be the word ‘chocolate’.

Now all you have to do is rush off and optimise your web pages for those phrases, right?

Wrong! That is what most people will do and as a result they will miss out on some very powerful keywords which aren’t immediately obvious.The next task is to find relevant keywords that do NOT contain the word ‘chocolate’.

On the search engines search for ‘chocolate’ and extract the phrases that those sites use. From that you will find relevant keywords such as truffles, cocoa, fudge, confectionery, gifts, gourmet and so on. Scan the list of related keywords and pick the ones that YOU feel are relevant to your business. So from the list of related terms you might pick truffles, cocoa, fudge and sweets.

By following this methodology, you can quickly generate hundreds of relevant keywords that reflect the subtleties – and niche markets – within your marketplace. Here’s what your final matrix may look like:

The average person will do their keyword research once and then forget about it. But that is the way to get average results. Effective keyword research is an ongoing process and to get outstanding results you must work at it regularly. To succeed in keyword research you should:

• Regularly check your keywords as they can go up and down in importance over time
• Continue to add more keywords to your matrix. The more effective keywords you have, the more profitable your online business will be.
• Monitor how well your keywords do.

Performance will always be a mixture of:

• Keywords that bring good traffic and good conversions (these are the words people use when they are in buying mode)
• Keywords that bring you good traffic but poor conversions (these are the words people use when they are in research mode)
• Keywords that bring low traffic but great conversions (these are the words that represent buying behaviour in niche markets)

Overall, there will be a mix of such keywords in any comprehensive keyword matrix.

So you’ve done all your keyword research and you’ve found the best keywords for your web site. How do you use these keywords to improve your web site copy writing so that you rank well on the search engines and attract the type of customers that you are after?

Well, let’s start with an example of a well-written and highly ranked web site in a competitive sector – digital cameras. At present searching on Google for 'digital camera' yields these results:

See how the titles of the top organic searches all include the search term ‘digital camera’. The words that appear in the title are completely within your control: the title tag is the most important place to put your primary keyword.

The top organic result comes from www.dpreview.com who have succeeded against 63 million competing pages – a great performance. So what can we learn by following the link? Let’s have a look:

Look at how the keyword ‘digital camera’ has been used in the title, the heading, linking text and the body copy. This is a well optimised page. But have a closer look at the title in the next diagram – it contains another important keyword, ‘digital photography’.

This keyword is also used well in the web site copy: So how does this page perform for the search ‘digital photography’?

Here are the results from Google for 'digital photography'. Top again with over 24 million competing web pages. A very nice piece of work and one you should try to emulate. The person writing this copy really knew what they were doing.

Here are the steps to go through to create a piece of optimised web copy.

1. From the keyword lists you have chosen for your site, pick a primary and a secondary keyword that you’ll want to rank well for with the article.

2. Write the title of the article making sure that you include the primary keyword in the title. You can also try to fit in the secondary phrase but if you find it hard to do so and still maintain good English, then don’t worry about the secondary keyword in your title. I try and keep the title to around 50 characters in length.

3. Write the description tag using both the primary and secondary keywords. This should describe what the article is about and should be around 200-250 characters long.

4. Write the first paragraph which should be a summary of the overall article and should include both primary and secondary keywords. If you’re not sure about how to do this study good newspaper writing. You’ll find that journalists tend to summarize the story in the very first paragraph.

5. Next, map out the structure of the article, writing headings and subheading that each contain keywords. Not only does this help you write good search engine copy, but it focuses your mind on what you really want to say and the quality of your writing will improve.

6. Finally, think about the internal and external links that you might point people to. The linking text should be keyword rich.

This page has given you some tips and a step-by-step process to follow.

However, you’ll get nowhere unless you put some of this advice into action and then see what happens to your search engine traffic. Then build on what works and discard what doesn’t.

My favourite definition of an expert is “someone who has made more mistakes than anyone else”. So don’t be afraid - get writing, get publishing, measure what happens - and then do it even better next time.

The above gives you an excellent start into the process of getting your site well listed on Google. There are many other factors but these become quite technical and so focusssing on the simple ideas illustrated above are a wonderful way to improve the success of your website