On Page SEO
After my Banana Picking post recently to demonstrate very basic on page SEO someone dropped me a note saying (correctly) that all I had demonstrated was how to rank for rubbish keywords.
So as I am a website designer and web design pays for my lavish jet setting lifestyle I said I would try and demonstrate how one post on this blog could (or maybe could not) influence ranking for the keywords web design Cork. The cornerstone of ranking on content alone is that the content is relevant and fresh. There is no point me stuffing the pages with web related terms and the word Cork in anticipation of getting onto page one of Google for those terms. SearchEngineLand is one of the most read SEO websites speaks about this exact practice.
At the moment I am already on page one of Google for “web design Cork” (Editors Note: Last use of this term). But I am below the fold on the page. Below the fold is a newspaper term where your article is on the bottom side of the newspaper and people quickly browsing do not even turn over the paper to read the bottom half. If you are below the fold you might as well be on page 20 really.
Speed of Click
In today’s high speed society people Google a term look at the top 3-4 results and the majority of clicks are on the first or second links. This is a proven fact.
If the content is not there te visitor is less and less likely to click not go to the third or fourth link and they may just refine their search. They also may not even click on the link if the meta Description is not well written from the page and looks like advertising spiel.
If the pages do not suit then they just refine their search term. So how you write your meta description is critically important for encouraging your visitor to click.
Make a Blog Part of Your Site’s Web Design
I always recommend that small businesses have a blog as part of their site to show news and information and it also helps to get keywords out there for Google. A lot of them do not like the word blog but they can call it newsletter, Product news, magazine whatever and modify the theme accordingly.
A Blog is easy to create and even easier to update. If I design it for them I show them how to post and not to just pump in words on their niche but to write well researched text that may not even have the specific keywords. Google can semantically tell what the topic is.
5 Additional Tips
- Read around the topic: Use Google itself to find out what is happening in your niche. For instance I am just discovering the powers of JQuery in place of flash for my simple sites and use more and more regularly. Look at how you can make your site more powerful, visual and even simplify it if it looks too complex. Simple is often as hard as complex!
- Technology: Not just technology related to the Internet but if your niche has new tools and techniques dig up what is happening about them and review, comment expand on the topic.
- Read Deeper: The temptation is to rely on the Internet as your only source. Don’t! Dig deeper, read a book (use the library), buy a book and read some more. Put what you have learned on your site.
- Different Presentation Methods: Don’t just use static text – use tools like Slideshare for presenting that data easily, Google Docs has powerful embedding of slides also.
- Social Media: Tell your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin friends. Stimulate their interest.
Last but not least it is OK to go back and re-edit and update if the initial work did not have the impact you wanted or to add new news.
Related Posts
Update – 27-Jan 2012
I realised that I had some pretty howling spelling mistakes in this post and corrected them and that there really wasn’t any flow to this piece. Nor was there a solid call to action.
Update – 16-October
Right after posting this post I moved from 6th in SERPs to 4th. I have Google XML-Sitemap on this site so it must have pushed this pretty quick and moved me up to this position. I am competing with 3 other people above me who have .iedomains which makes it a lot harder to rank but for one post not a bad result. I have some more ideas – watch this space for more on page SEO tips.
Update May 17th
Its all very well ranking for a term however if you don’t convert it into some reliable action so in the header of this post I have put in a brand spanking new image to guide people in the right direction for what I actually want them to do which is contact me.
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