Search Engine Optimisation Guide

Part 1: Benefits | Part 2: Drawbacks | Part 3: Myths | Part 4: Ranking Factors | Part 5: Costs

It's likely you've already heard about Search Engine Optimisation, even we receive hundreds of spam emails regarding it! Consequently, we're often asked to decipher some claims and theories passed around on the topic, the most commonly brought up are discussed below.

"My results are guaranteed"

If you've been told this one, prepare to be disappointed. As mentioned in the Drawbacks of SEO section, nobody is in control of Google except Google! That means, their algorithm can change at any time, which could completely upset the apple cart.

There are other variables too: what if your competition starts work on Search Engine Optimisation too? You can't both be guaranteed the same results as you'll be competing. Instead, by focusing on the correct techniques, trust that at some point your website will do well, for an established amount of time.

"Search Engine Optimisation doesn't work"

Frustration because of the above, or poor implementation can result in some people disregarding Search Engine Optimisation. Often, companies spend a lot of money chasing keywords that may never be achievable, or will at least take a huge amount of effort, time and money in order to get results. The key is to work out if you will get a return before the project starts.

The reality is SEO has worked for thousands of businesses. It delivers prospects that are actively searching for what you provide, and thanks to analytics software, it's all fully measurable. Traditional marketing is unable to be so highly targeted, and certainly isn't measurable in the same ways as SEO.

"Search Engine Optimisation is all about Meta tags"

Website Meta tags are intended to provide information to search engines in order to help categorise them. When search engines were new, keyword and description Meta tags were used to classify websites, but as website owners started to abuse their use, search engines have reduced their influence on rankings to almost zero.

Consequently, if you're hoping to improve your search engine rankings through changing your Meta tags, think again! Likewise, approach with caution any companies claiming to provide high rankings by only changing your Meta tags.

"Submitting to search engines will rank my site higher"

Submitting to search engines is nothing to do with the process of Search Engine Optimisation. The idea of submitting your website is to make the search engine aware of its existence and then start indexing its content. However, your website should be picked up naturally anyway if you have a well designed website.

There are many spam emails circulating promising to submit your website to thousands of search engines. All this means is that your website may be picked up, not ranked higher! Your ranking is decided by many other factors (as covered in the Ranking Factors section of this article).

The major search engines have a facility to upload a Sitemap. This ensures any fresh content is picked up, but you cannot directly influence how often a search engine spider will crawl and index your website's content.

"You must submit your site regularly"

Again, this is wrong, often used as a scare tactic by unscrupulous companies in order to get your money! As above, having a Sitemap that you update whenever you make changes to your website will mean it will be indexed regularly. It doesn't affect your rankings, but simply allows any new pages to be indexed. Where it's ranked is the by-product of this.

If your website is already indexed, there is practically no chance of it dropping out of search engines listings. If you cannot find your website in Google, then it's probably simply down to your website not being optimised. You can test what pages of your website has been indexed by typing site:www.yoursite.com into Google. This will show a list of pages held in the index.

"Having multiple domains will increase my ranking"

The theory here is that with the amount of backlinks (websites that link to yours) being part of the ranking algorithm, if you were to create lots of domains pointing to yours, you can increase your ranking with little effort.

This technique is a version of a 'doorway' page, where single page domains are made purely with the hope of boosting another website's ranking. Although it can work in the short term, this is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines, and if found out, could result in severe penalisation.

Creating multiple domains is often more hassle than it's worth. Most often they are hosted on the same web server and use duplicate content, so they carry very little weight. In comparison, a single link from an established website will carry far more weight, providing more benefit than 10s or even 100s of links from doorway pages.

Move on to 'Ranking Factors'

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