03
Jun
2008
DIY SEO
Search engine optimisation (or SEO for short) has always been a hot topic. You can still spend a lot of money on SEO – and some in the industry are definitely worth the money. My trouble was always knowing who to trust. SEO has always been a bit dodgy (or had its dodgy elements) and I know there are still “professionals” out there overselling their services, or even offering techniques which no longer work.
So this post is here to offer an alternative. DIY SEO in the CMSMS (CMS Made Simple) system
This advice should not be compared directly with the value provided by a real professional, but it is a start, and since you can do it yourself – you don't have an issue with trust. Simply update your key words, wait a week or 3 and then review your ranking on a google search.
Google is a black box
Even with the professionals Google is a mystery. Its search algorithm is a closely held secret. Experts pump data into one end and look at the ranking that comes out the other end. Then they guess at what happened in between. If enough SEO experts learn enough about the inner workings to distort search results then Google will change the rules to circumvent them. Its a constant arms race.
Google is interested in helping search users.
Well, Google is interested in ad revenue, but the best way to maximise that is by delivering search results that help its users. It dominates the search engine market because it is so much better at it than its competitors.
What this means is the best way to improve your search engine performance is to provide a website that offers value to searchers. Providing useful information and displaying key terms in appropriate places is the key to success.
What key words should you use?
Put yourself in the position of those prospective customers that are searching for your goods and services. How would they describe their needs? Look for key words and phrases.
Don't forget regional terms. Search users quickly learn that if they want to find local services they need to include locality terms. Don't forget to check your competition too. Sometimes terms like 'Australia' or 'Melbourne' may be too competive for you to rank on the front page of a search. When that happens settle for being competitive in your local suburb. A common search term list might be 'Melbourne, Carlton, Fitzroy, Northcote'.
The CMS lets you do it all yourself
Within the CMS you have access to almost everything you need to manage your own SEO strategy. Login to the admin area and insert your key words - then wait 1-3 weeks to see if your ranking has improved. Repeat. Look at the key words used by your more successful competitors, and try to emulate what they do.
Here's some instructions for doing it yourself
Meta-tags
meta-tags were the first SEO tools. You can read more about them here. They are not nearly so important now because they were so easy to cheat with (like promote your consulting business by adding “Pamela Anderson” to your key words). Key words are now basically useless, but the Description meta-tag still has some value. Ideally you will have a unique description for each page. To enter or edit your meta description, edit the page in the cms by visiting content>pages. On the page edit screen click on the options tab and then add your description tag to the metadata box.
Page Titles
Page titles are an important place for putting your key words. Page titles display in the menu bar at the very top of your browser. For most of our sites this text can be edited by navigating to the global settings screen (site admin>global settings) and editing the text in the “site name” text field. Save the screen and then refresh your web page to see the updated page title
Page URLs and links
Placing key terms in your links and URLs is very useful. It implies that you are pointing to content specifically on those issues. A hyperlink for the text “penguin links” that points to “www.penguinweb.com.au/penguin/” is going to be very attractive to a search for penguins.
You can update your urls by editing a page, clicking on the options tab and editing the “page alias” field. Remember to check your hyperlinks every time you edit this field. Not all links may be automatically updated by the CMS.
Page headings
Placing key words in page headings is given slightly higher weight than key words in normal paragraphs. Look at your page title text as well.
image alt tags
When you publish an image you are offered the ability to add alternative text. Ostensibly this is for users who are vision impaired, or who have images disabled, but Google loves this text too. Don't forget to add your key words here too.
Don't push it too far – Google is watching you
Google's intention is to provide valuable meaning to assist the web's users – not to cheat them into visiting your site for your own ends. If you cheat by creating page titles or urls which are no longer human readable, or are mad yard long jumbles of unrelated key words Google may consider this illegal SEO. In that case it will wipe your site from its indexes. Don't let this happen to you! The rule of thumb is whether the text that you are displaying is actually helping users to get where they want to go, and not confusing or offending them.
It does work
I just checked a new client of ours, www.connectingpoint.com.au. When we took up their website it was all but invisible to Google. Now we have it placing 4th on the google search “education mac reseller melbourne”, behind Apple itself and a major mac forum.
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