Improve your Google ranking

29/10/10

There’s a lot of confusion around search engine optimisation: what it means, and what you’re supposed to do about it. We asked our expert Thomas Jeffs from Lucidica to de-mystify the process for you.

Thomas runs a regular workshop on search engine optimisation in the Business & IP Centre. The next one is on 2 Nov.

Find out more and book

What is search engine optimisation (SEO)?

This is undertaking steps to get your website to appear in Google and further up the rankings for a given phrase. For example, if the phrase you choose to optimise is 'insurance' and your website appears on page 3 or 4 of Google, it's trying to get it to appear on page 1 or 2.

Why is it so important for small businesses?

It is important for any business that wants to increase its incoming sales leads. A well placed SEO campaign is an exceptionally low-cost way to advertise to the clients looking for your service. Imagine having a TV advert that only appeared when someone was thinking about your product, and even better, that you didn't have to pay for!

It is even more than just lead generation; it's about repeat business, reputation management and understanding how your clients purchase from you and find your services.

You may have a web presence and a site that you're proud of, but if it's not visible to Google for a large portion of the world you don't have any presence at all.

What are the main things that affect a site's Google ranking?

This is split into two parts. Firstly, whether Google understands what your site is about (called on-page optimisation) and secondly, how important Google thinks your site is (called off-page optimisation). Think of the BBC web page - Google places a huge amount of importance on it, but yet it doesn't come up when you search for 'insurance' as Google knows it doesn't contain information about insurance.

The on-page optimisation fundamentally boils down to plain and simple text. If you can highlight the text on your site one word at a time, you're on the right track. If you can't, you probably have a website Google can't read. If your website is full of images and moving graphics, Google is not going to understand what these are about.

Next you have to ensure you're talking about the right stuff and in the right quantity. So if you're trying to optimise for 'insurance' make sure your website talks about insurance. This isn't as easy as you may think, as just mentioning 'we are an insurance company' and then having 1000 words talking about 'how long you have been going' and 'where you're based', may lead to Google having a very different understanding about what you actually do.

Once you have the content of your site accurately reflecting what you do (and most importantly what people are looking for) the next step is build up the incoming quality links to your site. For example, a link to the Lucidica website from this site will help it rank higher in Google. Different links also have different value, for example, the BBC home page scores very highly . There are lots of ways of getting more links to your site, from using directories to giving away free content.

Where can you find out more?

This is just scratching the surface. If you'd like to learn more come along to our seminars at the British Library.

Find out more and book

I’d also recommend these websites:

www.sitevisibility.co.uk/blog
www.seomoz.org
www.seobook.com