Issue 52 - June / July 2009

Welcome to Marketing Karma: online marketing ezine with best practice tips & resources brought to you by Sam McArthur, Forty First.

This month:
Back to Basics SEO
As so many small businesses are now seeing the benefits of promoting their websites, I thought I'd go back to the basics of SEO as it does still cause confusion!

Plus, our latest blog posts, website of the month: Love Food, Hate Waste, and a note from Spike, the office manager.

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Back to Basics SEO

This month I wanted to revisit the basics of search engine optimization (or SEO) as I know it’s something many businesses get confused about and there’s plenty of conflicting information out there!

So what is search engine optimization?
SEO is the process whereby web pages are indexed and ranked by the search engines so that they appear in the search results when a query relevant to the content of the page is submitted. There are a lot of factors involved in ranking web pages (also known as the search engines’ algorithm), many of these factors SEO professionals don’t know as it’s proprietary information to the search engines. However, we do know certain factors which work, and by using these in website optimization, we’re giving the pages the best chance of ranking well.

SEO looks at the design of a website, the content on the pages, linking structure, meta data and external factors such as links. The most basic part of SEO is actually getting the web pages indexed by the search engines, whereby the pages are put in the to the search engines’ databases. The next part is gaining rankings, which is the difficult part!

How do you present your website in the search engines?
One of the most important things you need to consider when your site is being built, let alone the marketing of it afterwards, is how the pages of your site are presented in the search engines. This is really important as it can dictate whether someone clicks on your link or on someone else’s in the search results.

There are two tags which search engines use when presenting web pages: the title tag and the meta description tag (see example below).The title tag is one of the most important tags in SEO, not only does it play a part in the ranking of a web page, but is also the clickable link in the search results. The tag is seen on the website at the top of the browser bar as well as in the search results. Bearing in mind it influences rankings, it needs to contain target keywords for that particular web page.

The meta description tag won’t actually influence rankings but is the description that goes below the clickable link (title tag) in the search results, so needs to be a good description of the page that the visitor will land on when they click on the link. If it’s badly written then it may discourage someone from clicking on the link. The meta description tag is not visible to visitors to the web page as it’s hidden in the html code.

Both the title tag and meta description tag need to reflect the content of the web page, so will therefore be unique to each page. Don’t copy the same title and meta description tag across the whole website.

The keyword research you carry out for the products and services on your website will determine which keywords you will target on your website, so it’s best to write your title and meta description tags once you’ve decided which keywords you want to target on each of your pages. These factors alone won’t provide high rankings for your website, it all depends on how well your site has been built (hopefully there aren’t any technical problems with it), which sites are linking to your website, how proactive you are at promoting it and adding fresh content, what other marketing activities are included in your marketing mix.

So where do you go from here? If you’ve not optimized your website, or you don’t think it’s up to scratch, then do some keyword research (try the Google Adwords keyword research tool), and identify which keywords are suitable to target for your pages. Then ensure your keywords are written into your content and title & meta description tags!

WHAT'S ON OUR BLOG

Latest Blog posts from Forty First & Savvy Marketers:

Are You Being Yourself?

Understanding Anchor Text

Are You Protecting Your Brand?

7 Basic Email Newsletter Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

The Ever Changing World of Search

Could This Be the End for Email Marketing?

WEBSITE OF THE MONTH

Love Food Hate Waste, is on a mission to get the nation to change their ways and waste less food. According to the site, about 6.7 million tonnes of food is wasted each year and if we stopped throwing away food that could have been eaten it would have the same carbon impact as taking 1 in 5 cars off the road! The site tells us how we can reduce our food wastage with tips, recipes and best ways to store food. So if you're wondering what to do with those leftovers, look no further than Love Food, Hate Waste!

OTHER STUFF

Books, Tips & Resources
Check out our recommended books page listing several online marketing books tried & tested by us! We've also a great resources section which includes social media sites, tips on email marketing, web analytics, link building, copywriting & keyword research

Marketing Karma is brought to you by online marketing consultancy,
Forty First

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