Modulus

Search Engine Optimisation Tips and Techniques

OK, so I admit, even in writing this topic I am hoping this will provide me a little more traction on the search engines around search optimisation and web marketing. It is an aspect of what we do at www.modulus.co.nz after all!

So what does it mean for you and your Website?
In a nutshell, popular search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo each have their own tricky algorithms and search bots that trawl the word wide web in search of content. This content is ranked on relevance of it’s context and what the search engines believe the Website is about. If your Website is well structured with the correct use of tags, verbose naming conventions on links and page names with relevance to your business, saturated evenly with keywords and key phrases, then there is a good chance the search bots will know what your Website is about and go about indexing it and weighting it in relation to similar Websites.

The best approach for this is an organic “White Hat” approach whereby you avoid keyword stuffing and forcing back-links on paid link sites. This is often known as “Black Hat” optimisation and can severely dampen your ranking on the search engines. While an organic “White Hat” approach can take a little longer to achieve top results, it offers better longevity to your SEO. Using this approach in conjunction with Adwords by Google means you will get noticed on the ad network while your Website is growing and you are tweaking it for optimum search indexing.

Some things to avoid
A common mistake people make, and we have all done it, is to fill your site up with lots of the same content thinking that repeating words and phrases is what gets you noticed. Well, this is simply not the case. Repeat content actually confuses the search engines or they consider it a way of trying to cheat and therefore dampen your search ranks.

Avoid copying what your competition is doing and saying on their site, this creates non-unique content for you and lessens the chances of a good rank and can often favour your competition instead.

Watch out for offers in the email about paid SEO unless you have done your research and know what techniques they are using. Most of these places literally fill up repeat content throughout not very highly rated directories and social sites and can dampen you rank and make it hard to recover your Website from.

Some things to do
Make sure you have a good page title that is relevant and unique per page, this is the first piece of code the search bots hit and is critical. While you are at it, use the meta description to enter a brief description about your site. while this is not used to rank your site, if it is unique content and human readable, it helps determine the context of your site content to search engines, and often this description can be used to display to users on search results. So make it clear.

Get your Website on other popular sites, try and find some specific to your industry. New sites are great so where possible make use of the press.

Be honest, unique and to the point. if it is hard to understand it is hard to rank.

Use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus and LinkedIn to mention your products or services. Often the best referral is via peer groups.

What next
Contact us for a free analysis of your current SEO status by going to www.modulus.co.nz/free-analysis.

 

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