Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the way we optimise our pages to display higher in organic search on the web, this is differentiated from PPC from both the fact you must pay to display higher in PPC and will appear on a separate section of the results.

But how do companies perform better in SEO than other, this post aims to start you off on improving the SEO of your website.

Why is SEO marketing important

Firstly when done right SEO can improve the performance of your website immensely from a fairly small investment, by making your way to the top half of the first page of results your click through rate will increase exponentially.

A SEO optimised site also allows people to find your site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you sell through your site then getting more people on your pages is the first step in increasing sales and revenue (Revenue that will increase disproportionately to your costs, achieving continually increased profits over time)

It is important to note that SEO is not the only way your company should be perusing customers, but instead an integral tool to be added into your marketing mix.

Understanding how search engines work

Search engines use programs called “bots” to navigate the web via links and process the information stored on web pages, this is known as crawling. These bots constantly move through the web repeatedly, picking up information and storing it.

The information is stored on huge hard drives in datacentres across the globe to be accessed when we perform a search with the company that collected the data.

When you enter a search term into an engine such as Google, the program does two things; firstly it identifies all of the information it has found on the web regarding your search term. Once this has been accomplished it will organise the information, listing the most relevant results first.

Over the years the process in which it does this has evolved from simply picking out search terms form pages to now test sites on 100s of different factors with varying weightings only known to the company that has programmed them.

The challenge for SEO executives is to find out which factors of their sites most effectively affect their rankings.

Designing for SEO: The Basics

As we have already talked about, SEO can be a greatly in depth subject and following this guide will not be enough to get you to the top of the search page. Below are a few tips on how to start of improving your SEO rankings, you can find pliantly of information online on how to improve further and I have left some links at the bottom of the page to get you on the right track.

Content

Bots handle pages very differently to humans, they cant see rich elements on your page and understand them the same way you will. Instead they handle HTML text most effectively and often overlook rich elements such as images (such as .png and .jpg files), videos ( such as flash files) and other applications (including search boxes).

To get around this, the correct HTML needs to be applied to these elements; adding alt tags to images and transcripts to videos provides the bots with the information they need to accurately track what is on your pages. On top of this you should ensure the pages are supplemented with relevant text. The idea here is to ensure that bots don’t miss what you are showing your customers

Meta Data

Meta data refers the specific sections of a page, for which you can add in information. This includes Meta tags, meta descriptions, meta titles and page headings.

All of these are easily editable and should be optimised with relevant keywords (which we will discuss later).

Structure

Structure is key for SEO, without one that allows bots to move between the pages of your site, they will not find them. They do this through linking structures and to ensure you get the most out of your SEO you need to keep three things in mind: your pages link together in a relevant way, the text you use to link is related to where you send those that follow, your links must all eventually link up to your homepage for bots to be able to find them.

The image below shows how this can be done wrong:

See how Page A (the homepage) has links to pages B and E, but none to C and D, this structure would result in bots never reaching pages C and D, hence not crawling through them and not picking up for the terms you have optimised those pages for.

Keywords

As we said above keywords are key to successful SEO strategies. Search engines store pages based on their usage of certain keywords and it important to know what keywords will provide you with not only the most clicks, but the most relevant clicks (There is no point ranking for air travel when you sell groceries).

This bring said, simply filling your site with keywords wont make you rank higher, bots are clever and gauge the relevance of you’re keywords, in fact, its commonly believed that by flooding your site with keywords actually does more damage than good.

To find out how to identify strong and relevant keywords, check out the links at the bottom of the post.

Tracking and Measurement

Tracking your success isn’t as easy as searching yourself and seeing where on the page you land, it can seem daunting to do more in depth testing but there are loads of analytics tools you can use, both paid and free.

Some of the bigger names, such as Omniture and Fireclick charge for use of their software but have a greater level of depth and customisation. If this is out of your limits, programs such as Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics offer a great way to monitor your performance for free.

Key indexes to check on are visits and conversation directed to your site from specific search engines and search terms, over time you can tailor your efforts to focus on what has proven to be effective for you.