SEO Training

Do you want the content you have written for the internet to rank higher than your competitors?  Of course you do.  In order to rank highly you must first understand how Google works.  This should be a starting point for any SEO training.

Understanding How Google Search Algorithms Work in Simple English

Here is a simple version of how Google works in laymans English.  If you know how Google looks at a page then you can make sure that your content is written in a way that is complementary and therefore help you to rank higher on Google and other search engines.

At the core of Google is a set of mathematical algorithms.  Their purpose is to  try to determine the relevance of your page as opposed to other pages for a specific search term.  Imagine being given a billion pages of text in a language you don’t understand and having to give back the most relevant page for information on a word you also don’t understand.  You may know that there are pictures, but you can’t see them.  That is what it is like for the algorythm!

I am going to describe the process the Google search algorithms have to go through as if I was the algorithm.

If somebody was to do a search for “flabrat” then I am first going to look at URL’s to see if any of them have “flabrat” in them.  This is because flabrat.com is more likely to have information on “flabrat” than “globsheen.com”.  However, globsheen.com/flabrat.html is also highly likely to have some relevance.

Unfortunately there is no guarantee that a pages content has any relevance to its name without going and reading it.

Meta Title

The first information I will find on a page is the Meta Title.  This is the text that will be displayed in my search results.  Does this say “flabrat” in it?  If it does then I could be on the right track.

Meta Keywords

I’m going to take a cursory look at the Meta keywords too if they exist.  Not that I am going to put any weight behind them at all.  I’m just checking to see if they look spammy to me.  If they do I’m going to assume that the rest of the page is also trying to pull the wool over my eyes a bit.

H1 tag

Next comes the H1 tag.  This is really really really important.  The h1 tag is the heading for the whole page.  It is the heading that people will actually see when they view the page.  If the word “flabrat” is used in the h1 tag then there is a good chance that the page is actually about flabrat. See The importance of h tags for more information.

Other Header tags (h2, h3 etc)

These are sub-headings and should relate to the content in the text that comes after them.  They are not as important as the h1 tag but are still useful, particularly for breaking up your text and making it more readable for us humans.  The header tags used in these segments are h3 tags.

p tags

Not content with just looking at the title, like Google, I will then look at the actual content of your text contained in p tags or paragraph tags.  The first paragraph is particularly important, but if it was me I would be looking for the word flabrat throughout the entire document.

I would become suspicious if it appeared a lot though, so don’t overdo your keyword density.

Pictures

Google can’t actually see pictures.  Google can however read text associated with pictures.  For this reason your picture file names and alt text should both reflect your keywords.  Think of it as another way of getting your keywords onto the page without being overly spammy.  Without alt text in your images (img src=”images/picture.jpg” alt=”a flabrat in full bloom”) your pictures are doing precicely nothing for your Search Engine Optimisation.

Google search algorithms are a lot more complicated than that.

What I have just described is a very simplified version of what actually goes on to choose which page gets ranked highest in Google.  There are over 200 factors involved in Google’s search algorithm and nobody knows exactly what they all are or what weighting is applied to each one.

What I have done in this post is give you a foolproof method of ensuring your on-page SEO is good enough to help you get ranked higher.  Depending on what market you operate in, it could even be enough to get you ahead of some of your competitors.

On-page SEO is only half the battle though.  You will need to do some off-page or external SEO too if you want your page to rank in any but the very least competitive of markets.  My next post will be describe off-page SEO in simple terms.

On-page SEO is massively important.  It is the foundation to getting found online.  It is always my starting point.  Get it right and everything else you do will work better too.

Online Dating is becoming ever more popular in Ireland.  There are absolute parallels between those seeking partners online and those who are potential customers for your business.

They are all looking for something that attracts them.  Think of an online dating site as a shop.  Some of the products have pictures (and according to Jill McGrath over at MaybeFriends.com, these are the ones that get most attention).  If you are looking for a potential dating partner online, then you are most likely to click on a picture of somebody who is attractive and has a nice picture.  Translate that back to your business.  What can you learn from that?  It’s simple.  Good product pictures are essential to boost sales of that item.  I have seen far too many sites that use pictures they have taken themselves under bad lighting conditions.  Even the most lovely packaging is going to look shoddy if the lighting is bad and the background is not clean.  Get pictures from the manufacturer, or invest in hiring a photographer for product shots.

Same product, but if you were buying speakers which picture would you click on? The professional photograph or the one I took using my mobile phone on my desk?

What about if you sell a service rather than products?  Pictures are still important.  In fact, the links between online dating and selling your business can be even closer here.  People are attracted to people.  Getting stock images of attractive people to associate with your product makes sense, and costs practically nothing.

Back to our online dating analogy.  Once a hopeful browser has clicked on somebody they like the look of, what comes next?  (slow down, slow down).  Next comes finding out more about that person.  This is where text comes in.  In the case of dating, this is the text that somebody writes about themselves as a profile.  It is where the person has an opportunity to sell themselves as a person to a potential partner.  There are two ways in which this can be approached.  You can just put in your information, or you can actively sell yourself.  Indulge me for a moment while I give an example:

Bare Information: My friends say I am attractive.  I am easygoing, have a good sense of humour and like nights out and nights in too.

Selling: Thanks for clicking on my picture!  I’m a passionate about music, and love my nights out clubbing or going to gigs.  When it comes to romantic nights in, I like to cook with soft music playing in the background , and if it all goes wrong I know some good take-aways!

I think the difference is fairly obvious there, and the same goes for products / services…..

Bare information: Desktop speakers with volume and tone controls

Selling: Discreet desktop speakers that provide surprisingly good sound quality worthy of much higher end speakers.

Of course, from an SEO perspective, both contain the keywords “desktop speakers”.  Selling does not mean forgetting your SEO… it is about increasing conversions from visitors to sales.

Here is the difference between online dating and selling products or services: If you are on a dating site, and you have not put up a picture, and your profile does not sell you, it is not necessarily the end of the road.  You can still contact people, and possibly overcome the bad first impression you gave.  If you are selling a product, that’s it… you’re out of luck.  It is sale or no-sale time, and if you have not done it already now, you are never going to sell to that customer.

Just as dating is about getting to know someone, learn to trust them and developing a bond, before the sale goes through of your product online, you will probably need to earn some trust too.

If you are getting to know somebody you like and they seem to be holding back things, then you are going to be wary of them.  Likewise, if a customer cannot find your contact information, privacy policy, returns policy, registered business number or delivery information, they are less likely to trust your site.

First impressions last.  If you meet somebody you have met online, then how they present themselves on that first date will form a lasting impression. the same goes for your website.  If it looks even slightly less than professional then that is the lasting impression you are giving of your business.

This may all seem a bit far away from SEO training, but SEO and Online Marketing are linked.  There is no point having a site that ranks well if it does not appeal to your target audience.  Your customers come first. Those who forget this in the pursuit of SEO alone run the risk of becoming the internet equivalent of the old cat lady! (I’m not sure exactly what that is – suggestions in comments please).

Using pictures that include a female eye will draw attention to your page.

To date none of the posts  on this blog have contained pictures.  Why?  Frankly there is not good reason for it whatsoever.  In fact it is really inexcusable, lazy, and nearly guarantees that I do not get anybody reading much, if any of what I write.

Pictures speak a thousand words as the saying goes.  It is true, but not the whole story.  If you realise that good Search Engine Optimisation is not purely about search engines, then you have to look beyond text on a page.

Search engines love text.  That is how I got away with not putting any pictures into previous blog posts.  To a search engine a text only site is a sort of nirvana.  To real live humans, a site without pictures is boring, uninteresting, bland, heavy…… in short, it is not going to hold the attention of the average web surfer.

What sort of pictures should I use?

You need to captivate your audience.  Your pictures should be relevant to the text on the page.  They should also draw your readers to the page.  The rules for pictures online are no different to the rules for pictures in magazines.  Go into a newsagent and look at the magazine rack.  You will be met with row after row of faces looking back at you.  The reason is that people love to look at people.  I used an eye as the picture for this post to prove a point.  The human eye is about the most universally alluring image you can use.  Female eyes in particular.  This is because men are not as drawn by other mens eyes, yet women do not blank other women in the same way.  We all crave eye contact – even online.

But that is not the end of our story.  Pictures are all very well for people, but what about those search engines?  This is an area where many many web publishers fall down, all through not following W3C standards.

All images must include an alt attribute!

The alt attribute is where you get to tell the search engines what your picture is of.  Search engines can’t see pictures, they can only read the text that is attributed to them.  By leaving out the alt attribute, you are putting a blindfold over any search engine that crawls your site.  That’s plain stupid!

In the case of this post the alt text is the same as the picture title.  The line starts with the words “using pictures” which is the same as the blog post title.  In other words I have just managed to get some keywords into the page again without being spammy.  The alt text is descriptive.  It gives an idea of what the picture is about.  It could be better, it could say “picture of a single female eye”, but that would not work as a caption.  This post is all about people, search engines come second (but they still receive all the attention they need).

Even the file name of the picture is “eye-picture.jpg”, lest there be any confusion.

Choose your pictures wisely.  A few more minutes sourcing your pictures could make quite a difference to your site.  Try to use your own pictures (or make up your own if you are a dab hand at photoshop).  That way you are serving up original content which is a good idea.

How many pictures? Well this post could have done with at least one more picture.  That should give you an idea.  A lot of surfers will only look at pictures and captions.  They will only read the text if the caption of the picture gets their attention.  If you have got this far, then the picture did its job!

The other benefit of pictures is that they get indexed by Google images.  It gives another route in to your website that you have worked so hard on.  It’s all about using pictures to drive traffic, keep interest and in the case of original and eye catching pictures, get links.