What is SEO and how does it work?
SEO – Part 1 Structural optimisation
What is SEO and how does seo work? This is the very first part of optimising and marketing your site – view it like making sure the fresh fruit is seen as you walk into the shop and not just scattered about amongst the toiletries. SEO gives the search engines a structure to work with and includes correct page meta descriptions, correct page headings, search friendly url links eg. www.cavalry.co.uk/running-shoes rather than www.cavalry.co.uk/?id=657, and updated xml site maps
Many may say 'oh... that's all irrelevant now' but it forms a proper base for the rest of the optimisation and I've messed with one of my own sites and watched it tank in days from page one. Fixing these areas has seen it pop back. As a well known brand says - 'every little helps'
These basic steps help Google quantify what each page of your site is about and in general what the site is about and is the basis of the next stage – production of quality content
SEO – Part 2 Content research
This will form a great deal of the time and energy for your seo consultant and forms the basis for a lot of articles and page content.
Keyword research is the process of analysing your market and finding the right mix of relevant search terms that will guide a potential customer from Google to your website. If this is done wrong and users find your page does not match what they want Google will down grade your site in response, it will assume you are using inappropriate techniques to gain page ranking
Having said that properly structured pages with high quality content targeted with relevant search terms is all Google wants to rank you well for your targeted audience
There are tools available like Jaaxy and Google's own Keyword Planner to help with this process
SEO – Part 3 Authorship
A greater emphasis is being put on what is called authorship by the major search engines. This involves creating relevant quality content for your website and sometimes others through the use of Facebook, Twitter, guest blogging and creating valuable back links. This content is more relevant after you’ve dealt with your site’s content and forms part of a wider online marketing plan