CAT | SEO
SWSmiles is a dental practise based in the London suburb of Battersea. The company’s website wasn’t on page one of Google for any of the keyword phrases they were targeting. This included the keyword phrase Battersea Dentist.
There is a surprising amount of competition for this keyword phrase, but not enough to explain why a 3 year old domain hadn’t made it onto page one. In fact, the site was sitting on page seven of Google’s results pages.
Clearly, something had gone wrong.
When I looked over each page on their site, it was clear previous efforts had been made to have the site ranked in Google. The following list shows what had been attempted previously (and hint at why it wasn’t working)…
- All page filenames included the word Battersea
- Every page included a well-stocked keyword list, many including the word Battersea and Dentist
- Every page had the same meta description and keyword list
- Every page had the same title, which consisted of the company’s name
- There were no internal contextual links
- Text on the page didn’t reflect the contents of the keyword list, title or description
Putting this right was a relatively simple matter. For example, if you take a look at the contact page on the SWSmiles website, you’ll find an internal contextual link back to the site’s homepage (i.e. the words ‘Battersea Dentist’ are clickable, and linked to the homepage). This helps to create an association between the keyword phrase ‘Battersea Dentist’ and the site’s homepage.
The key pages on the site now have unique titles, meta descriptions and keyword lists that reflect the actual content on the page. Headings and titles are now coordinated, and build an accurate picture of what each page on the site covers. I used a keyword density program to achieve this (an essential tool in search engine optimisation).
For various reasons, I had to pick my SEO battles carefully on this site. In particular, it was essential to focus on the main keyword phrase. The client wanted more optimisation than was possible, and it came down to selecting a keyword battle we could win. It’s worth noting that this is one area where day-to-day experience with SEO pays off. Anybody can learn the mechanical steps of SEO. It takes time to develop an instinct for the specific area in which a site is likely to gain the most SEO benefit.
I selected Battersea Dentist because it was clear this was a battle we could win. While there is competition, it’s not especially sophisticated. We’ll probably never unseat the number one site (they have the perfect domain for the keyword phrase, and it’s 4 years older than my clients), achieving spot #2 or #3 is entirely reasonable given the constraints I’m working under.
The site arrived on page one with nothing more than highly focussed content optimisation, and a couple of well chosen external inbound links. The goal now is to get into a top 3 spot for ‘Battersea Dentist’. This puts SWSmiles above the Google Local Business map. There are 2 keys to making this happen…
- External inbound links (including but not limited to contextual links)
- More content
The cheapest of these 2 tactics is #1, external inbound links. So that’s what I’m focussing on. These will be spread across a series of directories, and other sites. High PageRank sites are not required in this case, which makes the exercise affordable. In fact, I provided a fixed quote for a set number of links.
It’s my normal practise to over-deliver with links, as it’s not always possible to control context, the nofollow attribute, or indeed the SEO value conveyed by any external link.
These links will be delivered over a 4 week period, as link building works best when it’s carried out on an incremental basis.
If the client decides to go for #2 down the tract, there is an obvious candidate to easily and quickly generate more content. This has the advantage of setting up future SEO gains for other potentially lucrative keyword phrases (e.g. teeth whitening). That candidate is the Costmetic Dentistry page, which covers a number of specific dental services…
- Teeth Whitening
- Porcelain Veneers
- Cosmetic Bonding
- Cosmetic Orthodontics
- Botox
From an SEO perspective, these have a better chance of ranking well if they each sit on their own highly focussed page.
Search Engine Optimization contains three main components. They are…
- Research
- Content optimization
- Backlink generation
Each of the stages must be done in order. There’s no point optimizing content until you’ve found out which keywords will have the most impact. Likewise, there’s little point doing any backlink generation until your content is optimized to receive it.
Research:
The research stage involves working out which keywords people use to find your type of website. That way you optimize your site’s content for search terms people actually use.
The main tool used by SEO professionals to research keywords is the Google Keyword Analysis tool. To use this tool, simply enter one keyword you think might be useful. Google will then give you a long list of similar terms.
This tool gives you a lot of data about the keyword phrases available to you. I find the most useful phrases are…
- The number of searches per month on each phrase (in your local area and worldwide)
- The amount of competition for each keyword in Google AdWords
Your task is to use this information to home in on 2 or 3 keyword phrases that generate enough searches per month to send visitors to your site, and that you can realistically compete for. For example, it’s unlikely someone new to SEO will be able to compete for a keyword that attracts 100,000 searches per month.
If your site is brand new, it’s best to stick to modest terms. For example, I recently optimised the web site of a London Dentist. He has a new site, so there’s no point trying to compete for “Dentist” or even “London Dentist” at this stage. Instead, we’ve picked “Battersea Dentist”. This term attracts 600 local searches per month. Despite the low search volume, there’s a lot of competition in AdWords for this term.
The low search volume is misleading, because it’s specific to a particular London suburb. There is a high likelihood that somebody typing “Battersea Dentist” into Google needs a dentist in Battersea. They may even need one urgently! Such a person is likely to be a good quality visitor, and the relatively high number of people bidding for the keyword in AdWords confirms it.
The best way to learn the ins and outs of Google’s keyword analysis tools is to start using it. Your goal is to create a short-list of keyword phrases appropriate to your particular situation. Here’s a handy guide…
- Look for low-volume keywords if your site is new, if you don’t have much SEO experience, and/or you need to get a top 3 result quickly
- Look for medium volume keywords if you have an established site that is already in the top 3 for several low volume keyword phrases
- Look for high volume keywords if you have a lot of SEO experience, have the ability to add content to webpages with high PageRank scores, and/or are already in at least one top 3 spot for a medium volume keyword
What constitutes low, medium or high volumes? It depends entirely on your particular set of keyword phrases. It’s best to look at the search volumes returned by the Google Keyword Analysis tool and make a relative judgement. One keyword might generate nothing over 1,000 searches per month. Another might have several variations that attract millions of searches per month. You need to make a judgement call for the specific keyword variations you’re looking at.
Content Optimisation:
Content optimisation is what most beginners think of as SEO. This is where you optimise the content on a web page for the 2-3 keyword phrases you’ve selected. If you’ve never done content optimisation before, it’s best to stick to your site’s homepage and optimise that.
As you gain experience, and see your homepage make it onto page one of Google for a specific keyword, you can shift your focus to other pages.
Here are the elements that matter when it comes to content optimisation…
- The HTML title tag
- The main headline on the page
- The rest of the plain-text content
- The meta keyword tag
- The meta description tag
- Internal contextual links
The HTML title should contain the main keyword phrase. This should be written as a natural sentence, rather than shoe-horned in. If you can get all 3 keyword phrases into the title, that’s great. If you can’t, don’t worry too much. You’re better off getting a top 3 spot for your main search term, than landing on page 2 for all 3 keywords.
Focus is the key to SEO success. Especially when you’re first starting out.
The main headline for the page should appear within HTML h1 tags. This headline should include your main keyword phrase, and be a natural sentence. Remember, it has to serve as a headline as well as a place to restate your main keyword.
The rest of the text on the page should include your keyword phrase at least twice. This ensures your main keyword appears at least 3 times in the text of the page (headline and in the text). Use a keyword density tool to make sure your main keyword appears at or near the top.
I use the keyword density tool in SEO Quake. It’s easily the most useful free SEO tool on the web. Especially when it comes to building custom meta keyword tags for specific pages on your site.
The meta keywords tag should contain only keywords that appear on the page you’re creating the tag for. Don’t simply stuff in every keyword you can think of. Instead, use the Density tool in SEO Quake to tell you the number of times each keyword appears.
If you find none of your targeted keywords appear on a particular page, it tells you that you haven’t optimised your content. You must rethink it, and find ways to add your keywords into the page’s content.
The meta description should contain natural sentences that include your main keywords (no more than 3 keywords).
An Internal link is one that appears on a webpage on your site, and that links back to your homepage. It becomes contextual when the clickable text in your link contains your main keyword phrase. For example, if you wanted to optimise your homepage for the keyword Battersea Dentist, you’d make that text clickable (as per my example).
Google will note the text in the link, and associate it with the page you’re linking to. This is a powerful SEO technique, because you have absolute control over the internal content of your site.
Backlink Generation:
Once you’ve optimised your site, it’s time to start generating links back to it. Here’s what you need to know about backlinks from an SEO perspective…
- Make sure the site doesn’t add the nofollow attribute
- Make sure the link is to the page you’re optimising (e.g. homepage in our case)
- The higher the PageRank of the webpage you’re linking from, the more SEO power it has
- Try to get the 3rd party site owner to make your main keyword phrase clickable (i.e. a contextual link)
- Link swaps have little or no SEO value. You need links that are one way (from them to you)
The nofollow attribute is a link that has this code added to it: rel=”nofollow”. This harmless looking attribute means Google negates any SEO power the link may have had. Many well-known sites add this attribute. For example, Twitter automatically nofollows every link.
The only way to tell for sure, is to examine other links on the site and see if they have the nofollow attribute. To do this, you need visit the page and view the source (click the view menu in your browser, and then click the view source option). Use the search function and look for nofollow.
A site’s PageRank is a measure of its credibility in Google. The higher the PageRank, the more SEO power it conveys. Often military, university and government sites have a high PageRank. If you have the contacts necessary to get a contextual link from such site, it will help your SEO efforts.
You can examine a site’s PageRank by installing Google’s toolbar in your browser. Once it’s installed, use the options button to switch on the PageRank graph. As a general rule of thumb, avoid getting links from sites with a PageRank of zero.
As you can see, there’s a lot to search engine optimization. This is a beginner’s guide, designed to get you started. Want in-depth information about DIY SEO? Download the DIY Guide to SEO on SEO Marketing London.
Google’s PageRank is a number from zero to 10. A new site (such as this one) starts life with a score of zero. Over time, this score will tend to rise in value. Here’s how Google describes PageRank (as at 20 November 2009)…
PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.
It all sounds very reasonable, doesn’t it? Especially as Google go on to give valuable clues about how to acquire PageRank…
PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance.
Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query.
In addition to the above clues, you can find a lot of detailed information that explains how to earn PageRank all over the Internet. And until recently, I didn’t really question what I thought I knew about PageRank. After all, when I put in the effort I tended to see the results I expected.
Then I read an interesting blog entry on SEOCO. This article essentially accuses Google of punishing the web’s leading SEO sites by deliberately suppressing their PageRank scores.
Of course, I have no idea whether or not this is correct. Yet a quick look at the 4 sites in question shows they have the things normally associated with high PageRank…
- A lot of inbound links from external sites with high PageRank (i.e. many votes from important sources)
- A lot of well optimised and relevant content (from an SEO perspective)
- Deemed by professionals to be the best resources on the web for their specific areas of interest
For an example of this last point, type PageRank into Google. The #1 site on the list is Wikipedia, a source of unimpeachable knowledge (ahem). You won’t find SEOMoz on page one, despite offer over 1,000 PageRank-related articles. Faced with a choice between Wikipedia and SEOMoz, I know who I’d turn to when I wanted up-to-date and useful information about PageRank.
All 4 sites mentioned in the article have relatively low PageRank given their status. Could Google have some undeclared beef with these sites simply because they help people to understand search engine optimisation? And if so, why on Earth would the company take issue with such sites? What else does Google have issue with, and what am I missing out on as a result?
The single most important tag in SEO is the HTML title tag. The content of this tag is used by Google for at least 2 purposes…
- To allocate keyword phrases for which your site will be indexed
- As a headline that appears in Google’s results pages
For example, the lead generation site ASureImage has the following title tag: Lead Generation – Online Marketing – SEO – ASureImage
Take a look at what appears in Google for this site…
As you can see, Google is using the text in this site’s title tag as it’s headline. What’s more, Google is using the meta description as it’s description for the site.
This alone tells us the title (and meta description) tags are important. When you add in the fact it uses the words in the title tag to index the site, it’s clear it has a big role to play in content optimisation.
