Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For almost anything that is sold over the internet, from kitchen pots to luxury homes, the search engines will list thousands of websites selling it. The owners of all of these sites want to be be at the top of the list, so that when people search for the product their website will be seen. The reality is that the website in the first position will get a lot of traffic, those in the top 5 or 10 will get a substantial traffic, if you are not in the top 30 you will get virtually no visitors through the search engines.  So, you want your website to be positioned as near the top as possible, so that you get as many visitors and consequently as many sales as possible.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of modifying your website so that the search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN) will give it a higher ranking. The following text describes how this is done, using Google as an example.

Essentials of SEO

We suggest as background information that you read the following articles. The articles reference Google, which is the main search engine (over half of all search traffic) but the principles described are generally true of all the major search engines (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, etc.):

• Organic versus Sponsored - The two types of search engine results

• Google and SEO - Relationship of search engine ranging and Google business requirements

• White Hat and Black Hat SEO - Comparison of the two different approaches to SEO

• Keyword Selection - Method and tools to select the best keywords

The articles listed above provide a background for SEO and how to select keywords that will give the best return on your SEO investment. Once you have decided on your keyword list, you can then begin the work to obtain a good search engine position for these keywords. As described in the articles, there are several hundred factors that determine your search engine position. Fortunately, there are only a handful that you need to get right in order to obtain a good position (by which we mean, within the top 10 positions):

• Text. Your keywords and keyword phrases should occur in the text. For example, if you want to rank for 'property in France', this phrase needs to appear on your site. You may already use the phrase 'French property' in your text, but the search engines do not know that 'French property' is the same as 'property in France'. Whatever phrase you are looking to rank for, that exact phrase should occur in the text (on the page that you are doing SEO for).

• Title and Description. When you get a list of sites from a Google search, you will see that each site listed has a title and a description. These titles are not from the website text, but from the META TITLE and META DESCRIPTION programmed in the individual page by your website designer. Ideally, both of these should contain your keywords.

• Links. If a site has useful or interesting information, other sites will link to it. Alternatively, there is no reason to link to a site which has no useful content. Google is aware of this and consequently will count links to your site as the most important indication of both the value and the nature of your site. Obtaining incoming links to your site is the major factor that will determine where you stand in the search engine rankings. Note that it is links to your site which help you, not links from your site (except in a minor way, if done in a certain fashion). The ideal link to your site is a link that:

  • Is on the same topic as your site. If your site is about French property, then a link from another site (page) about French property will be more valuable than one about some other topic.

  • Has few other outgoing links. If you are one of a handful of links on a page, this is a better indication of your quality than if you are one of hundreds on the page.

  • Is itself respected. If the page linking to you is highly rated (as indicated by PageRank and other factors), then this could be worth 100 links from pages which are not respected by Google.

  • Is one-way. If the site links to you but you do not link to it, that is much more valuable than when you link to each other. The reason for this is that a lot of website owners simply agreed to exchange links with each other, regardless of the value of each other's sites, so Google now gives little consideration to reciprocal links.

• URL. If your web page address (URL) contains your keywords (e.g. www.mydomain.com/french-property.htm), this can provide an advantage.

• Natural Text. A lot of website owners have tried to write their site with the search engines in mind rather than people. We suggest that you design your site with your visitor in mind and do not construct your site around the search engines. Firstly, designing your site around people rather than around the search engines will mean that you will have a better visitor-to-sale conversion rate. Secondly, the search engines are becoming better at detecting sites that are constructed around search engines and better at reducing their ratings accordingly.

• White Hat SEO. Think twice before using Black Hat SEO, or allowing SEO professionals to use it on your site.

If you do the above well, you can be 99% certain of a good search engine position. Many SEO professionals will display their professional depth of knowledge by talking about other factors, such as 'keyword density' and '3-way links' and 'linking structures'. However, all these considerations are secondary compared to the importance of the factors described above. SEO professionals will point out that their depth of knowledge will allow you to rise in the search engine rankings faster and higher than someone else without this knowledge. While this is generally true, the question is the cost of this service versus the extra value; for some websites such professional assistance more than pays for itself whereas for others it does not.