Before we dive into the sections below, if you are serious about improving your search engine ranking you need Google’s (free!) Webmasters Tools, it is your command centre for SEO. If possible also add a submit a sitemap to you webmaster account at Google - this will automatically supply Google with a complete list of the pages on your website. WordPress users can install the Google XML Sitemap plugin which takes care of the sitemap.xml creation and submission. If you need any assistance setting up your webmaster account or sitemap please contact us.

Website code

If you have a good website developer most of the SEO achievable by code should be taken care of during the creation of the site. If you are currently getting your website built, ask your web developer what steps they are taking to ensure your site will have the best chance of ranking highly on search engines. Below is a brief checklist of good SEO practises for web development, ask your web developer and see how your site stacks up!

URL Structure

Your URL structure should contain relevant keywords, separated by dashes and it should be as short as possible (5 words is good!), eg:

• BAD: http://wot-not-to-do.net/?p=142&variable=876134784372468264
• GOOD: http://domain.com/short-concise-keywords/

Page Title and Meta

Your page title and meta should be well formed, ie: page title should be concise and contain relevant keywords, the description meta should be helpful and unique on each page, the robots meta and canonical urls should be used where relevant, also location latitude and longitude may be helpful for some sites. WordPress users should download the fantastic SEO all in One plugin which takes care of most of this for you. If you would like to check your page titles and description meta Google site:domain.com (exchange domain.com for your domain), this will give you a list of site pages as Google sees them.

• BAD: Really, Long, Stupid, Title, Like, A, Thesaurus, Entry, Most, Of, Which, Gets, Cut, Off, Anywa…
• GOOD: Page Title Containing Keywords – Site Title

Content Structure

Your page content should be well formed with modern, semantic and standards compliant HTML, ie: header tags should be used appropriately, menus should be lists, images should always have alternative text etc. For the untrained eye good quality code can be hard to spot … even then code quality can be subjective, but here is a couple of simple tests you can do for your site which may give you an indication of the quality of the code.

1. Validate your website pages at http://validator.w3.org/. If your site validates or gets only a few errors it’s a pretty good sign your web developer has taken care when coding.
2. View your site without stylesheets. Without stylesheets your site should look like a well structured Word document; with the most important headers the largest, sub-headers correctly nested, navigation and sub-navigation should be presented as lists etc. As with the first point, this does not guarantee search engine optimised code but it should indicate whether your web developer is using modern, semantic HTML.

Page Speed

Your site should be optimised for speed. This means your website images should be compressed (there is great programs such as ImageOptim for the mac which squeeze images to the smallest size possible), your icons should be combined into sprites, your stylesheets and javascript should be combined and compressed where appropriate, javascript should also be placed in the footer if possible. Google has recently announced that site speed is a metric in the search page rankings, it is only a very small component of SEO but these are good practises nonetheless and having a snappy website improves the experience for your users.

If you are uncertain your site is using the best practises outlined above you should contact your web developer, or feel free to contact us for a professional opinion of your site.

Website content

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; producing quality content as regularly as possible is the single best thing you can do for your search engine page ranking. In fact, for 99% of sites out there, producing content is the only way to reliably improve page ranking; this means writing articles or uploading photos or creating videos … find a way that you feel comfortable communicating with your audience and go for it. Let’s look at SEO from the reverse angle for a moment, what does Google want to deliver to their users? They want to deliver the most current, relevant and authoritative content on the internet – by adding regular posts about a particular topic you are signalling to Google “Hey! I’m someone who knows a lot about this subject”.

Writing lengthy blog posts can take a lot of time and you may wonder what on earth you would talk about week after week, but producing content does not have to be intimidating, here’s some examples;

• Post pictures: If you are a designer or a creative this should be a no-brainer. Nearly every mobile phone has a camera and there are multiple ways for you to easily upload and embed photos directly to your website. Every time you see something inspiring, interesting or “challenging” snap a photo, tap out your thoughts in 25 words or less and post it.
• Microblog: Posts do not have to be long to be worthwhile, for example: “Azaleas must be popular this spring, we’ve sold 16 this week already!” gives potentially useful information (or perhaps a starting point for discussion) and if you’re a flower store you’ve just added ‘azaleas’ as a potential incoming search term.
• Re-use questions from your clients: If a client or potential client asks a question it’s likely others will find that information useful also, use your answer as a starting point and flesh it out a little for your website. (This post itself is a fleshed out frequently asked question!).
• Pay someone else to do it: For some businesses it may be worthwhile and appropriate to outsource the copy writing to a freelance writer. The cost will obviously vary depending on the writer and the topic but you should expect to pay around $20-$50 per article.

Google’s Webmaster Tools gives you a way to monitor the keywords on your site. A keyword’s significance is calculated not only on the number of times it is used (keyword density) but also on where it is used, for example, keywords in the url and page title are given greater weight than those used in a blog paragraph. Making use of the alternate text for images is also a great way to boost certain keywords. The anchor text of incoming links also counts towards keyword significance (and can be misused).

You should be aiming to fill the top 5 or 10 Keywords (as calculated by Google) with your most important search terms:

Link building

I am not talking about paying some dodgy operator to spam online forums with your website link, black-hat methods like this are counter productive as search engines will penalise your site if they find you engaging in link farming or exchanging links with unreputable sites. However, there are some legit methods you can use to increase the number of links coming to your site which will in turn boost your search engine ranking;

• Submit your site to online directories, such as DMOZ and Google Local. Also, do a search for other directories that are related to your industry and submit your site. There are some directories, such as the Yellow Pages where you can pay for a website listing… depending on your advertising budget this may be a worthwhile option, however in general I would not advise on paying for a directory listing.
• Take a look at your business-to-business relationships, if you have close relationship with another business there may be an opportunity to exchange links which in turn helps both parties.
• Participate in forums and blog discussions. Online forums will usually give you the option of a signature which is placed at the bottom of every post you make, this can be a great way to build incoming links particularly if the forum or blog is related to your business.
• Write an article for a well known news or blog site. Many blogs will accept articles and give the author a link back to their website, this can be a worthwhile proposition in many cases because the authority of the publishing site will be passed onto the authors site.

Not all links are equal. Search engines use complex algorithms to devise the ‘authority’ of any given website, the most famous is PageRank created by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Essentially it means is that a certain website may have less links than another but if the links it does have are from ‘authoritative’ source then it will likely have a higher PageRank.

Content Management System (CMS)
A CMS gives you control over various aspects of your site through an online administration area. The two CMS’s that we predominantly use are WordPress and Expression Engine, both are very well developed and easy to use, updating content or adding a new page is as easy as using MS Word. If you need to post news or blog entries, run a forum, shopping cart or similar, then you will need a CMS.

Hire a developer by the hour!
This option seems a little self serving I know, but seriously consider how many updates you will actually make per year. If it’s less than 12 updates a year, or one a month, then I can almost guarantee hiring me by the hour will be a cheaper option than a CMS. I have lost count of how many clients who have requested and invested in a content management system, only to let it sit and not regularly update their websites. Adding a CMS, along with training etc can quickly add thousands of dollars to your quote. My standard web fee for website updates is $50/hour, uploading a new photo and changing some words might take 30mins .. so if you make 12 updates a year: $25 x 12 = $300/year.

Your AdWords campaign should fit into your overall advertising budget and marketing plan. A suitable advertising budget will vary from industry to industry and from business to business, but a good starting point is around 5% of sales. This advertising budget may be spread over various forms of media; such as print, radio, television and the internet, but even if your marketing is solely directed online you should be wary of putting all your eggs in one basket. Advertising through Google may not give you the best bang for your buck.

Once you’ve arrived at your budget for online marketing consider these three alternatives;
1. An AdWords campaign
2. Direct marketing via an email campaign
3. Search Engine Optimisation (improving page rank, link building etc)

AdWords Campaign
If you’re reading this article, I’m hoping you know at least a little about this Google service. Put simply; with AdWords you are buying traffic to your site. The cost of each visitor varies but is usually between $0.20 to $1 per click. This can be handy when your site is not ranking in Google’s organic search results, or perhaps you want to target a particular site. Let’s say you make designer jeans, your site may not rank highly in a search for ‘jeans’ but you can bid for a spot on the search results through AdWords. Or perhaps you notice your favourite fashion blog is running AdSense, through AdWords you can bid for advertising on this site.

Email Campaign
Email campaigns can be very successful particularly if you have a targeted email list of potential clients. Email lists can built by using a “subscribe to newsletter” form on your website, from your database of past clients or by researching a list of potential clients (cold-calling). Email cold-calling is a delicate subject, no one likes to receive mountains of unwanted email, but if you don’t send the emails out in bulk, make it personal, offer something of value and give a clear opt-out option… then I believe you can tread the fine line between marketing and spam.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
By far the best method for driving traffic to your site and improving sales is hitting that number 1 position on search engines for your relevant keywords. Improving page rank should be part of your long term strategy for online marketing, this is an area where things generally don’t happen over night. Page Rank can be improved by optimising your website code and keyword density, but ultimately it comes down to investing equity in your site by producing content and being active in your online community.

This is a very basic introduction to Adwords and online marketing, if you’d like to learn more please view the resources listed below, or contact us!

Other resources:
AdWords Learning Center
Email Marketing Reports

Some tasks you may consider hiring me for;

• Professional PSD to XHTML/CSS/JS work.
• HTML email templates, tested on all major email clients.
• SEO consulting and Google AdWords consulting.
• Website maintenance, from adding an image to recoding an entire site.
• WordPress plugins, theme creation and training.
• PHP scripting, from custom forms and surveys to complete online applications.
• … and pretty much anything to do with the internet. Try me :)

Please contact paul@kilbot.com.au for more information on availability and rates.

The role of the web developer will vary from agency to agency and from project to project. Most commonly, the web developer refers to the person responsible for the code component of the development process. In a small web development agency, a web developer may be responsible for all aspects of development, including design. Indeed, a good developer should have experience in all aspects of the development process so that good practices are built into the web site as a matter of course.

As the internet industry matures there is a need for more specialised roles in web development. Large agencies will usually include a project manager who takes care of the site planning, wireframing and manages the web developers and web designers. Specialist SEO firms are springing up all over the internet (although most of them are charlatans in this humble web developers opinion :p ). Web developers themselves will usually pick one or two languages to specialise in.

For more information about my specialities, please visit the About page.