Search Engine Optimisation - Understanding Key SEO Terms

If you have your own website, you will have come across the term 'search engine optimisation'. The problem is that for many of us, the language of search engine optimisation (SEO) is unfamiliar and perhaps a little scary. There's no doubt that a good SEO strategy is vital for a successful web presence, but how do you know how to implement one unless you know what the terminology means? In order to de-mystify the language of SEO, here's a brief guide to some key SEO terms that you may have heard in relation to updating your website in order to boost your search engine rankings. Remember that having optimised content on your website is essential to perform well in search engines such as Google, so make sure that you get your SEO right, whether you do it yourself or hire a professional SEO company to do it for you.

Key words and phrases

Before you carry out any SEO on your website, you need to identify the key phrases that are most likely to attract the right kind of visitors. Your aim is to convert visitors into sales, so you need to make sure that your website can be found when people search for terms related to your industry. This first stage in your SEO strategy needs to be right; if you're using phrases that aren't really relevant to the products or services you're offering, then regardless of how many hits your website is getting, you're not going to turn any of those visitors into purchasers.

Page URL

Your URL should be different for every page on your website, in order to give the search engines a clear idea of what content can be found on each individual page. Your page URLs will be your domain name followed by a forward slash and some descriptive text (preferably key words). So for a page on your website that focuses on, say, leaflet design, your URL for that page should look like this: domainname.com/leaflet-design This URL clearly indicates to the search engines what content can be found on that page of your website.

Meta Titles

Search engines will look at your meta titles to help decide what category your provision falls into. Your meta title should provide a description in a set of 3 or so phrases and will show in search engine results (and provide the clickable link through to your site) and will also be displayed at the top of the computer screen when visitors are browsing that page. You should use your meta title to show what your company is called, what products or services are promoted on that web page and maybe also the area in which you are based. For example: UK Graphic Design | Print Design Services | Leaflet Design | Your company name

Meta Description

When you do a search on the internet, you'll notice that under the meta title, there are 2 lines of text that provide a further description to the content on that specific web page. This is your meta description and the search engines will use this to decide how relevant your site is to the search terms used - a good meta description can really help to drive quality traffic to your site, so make sure you write this well! You should incorporate your key phrases that are relevant to the page content in your meta description and also use it to promote your products or services.

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords don't have the same importance in your SEO strategy as they used to, but it will do you absolutely no harm to include them anyway. You will have already identified your keywords and phrases at the outset of your SEO campaign, so use these in your website's code to solidify your site's relevance and value.

H1 Tag

The main heading on your website should be formatted as a H1 tag and you should use the keywords or phrase that most closely applies to the content on that page. The copy in your H1 tag will be used by the search engines to index your site and decide whether your website page is relevant to searchers.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are internal links to other parts of your website - they help with user navigation and are another powerful SEO tool. Don't use ambiguous terms like 'click here' as your hyperlink, because it won't tell the search engines anything - instead use phrases like 'ask us about our leaflet design services', which give both the user and the search engines clear information about where the link leads.

Hopefully this article will give you a clearer idea about the meaning and application of some of the most common SEO terms. If you're looking for help with your website SEO or internet marketing strategy, there are hundreds of professional SEO companies around who can help - do your own internet search and see how they have implemented some of these key SEO strategies for their own websites!
By Steve Mackie  |  Source