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The page-by-page approach to SEO

Monday, May 10th, 2010

The initial optimisation process may seem like a huge task, but really it’s only part of any sites search engine optimisation. Just as getting to the top of your industry is only the start of your hard work, getting your pages to where you want them to be is just the beginning for your SEO. You need to maintain this, and fine-tune your optimisation where appropriate.

Maintenance of your optimisation is something that you can plan for during the initial process, and you can talk to our consultants about SEO maintenance at SEO Consult Australia. Another aspect of your continued optimisation is the fine-tuning of every page you’ve optimised.

Fine-tuning pages for ladder climbing

Taking your site page by page is important when you want to ensure that your placement in the search engines is as high as you can get it. Just because things have improved after your initial work doesn’t mean that they can’t get better.

For example, you may find after the initial search engine optimization process that one of your main pages gets to the top ten results for its keyword, and that your bounce rate goes down by 50% due to some of your SEO tweaks. With a little more work, it is possible to reduce the bounce rate even further, causing the search engines to reassess your position and potentially boosting you up into the top five, where your traffic rate increases even further.

Search your statistics for vital clues

After your freshly optimised site has gone live, the statistics should come pouring in. Analysis is an essential part of search engine optimisation, and analysing the statistics for individual pages at this stage can give you some important clues on how to better please your users.

Interpreting your statistics requires a little creativity. Your site statistics should tell you where every internet user accessed your pages from. Look at the access points for each page and use that information to develop a profile of the target groups for your pages. What things do they like to see? What are they looking for? This process is much like the target user profiles you built at the beginning of your campaign, with a little more specific information to rely on.

Look for geographical stats

One thing that is frequently overlooked when it comes to site analysis is the locality of site users. It’s true that the global nature of the internet often means that a target user group has members that come from all sorts of places. It can be surprising, though, how much individuals within target user groups have in common. Locality is one of the possibilities, and you should look for it.

Why look for locality? If one of your target groups has one geographical location, you can use that to further your SEO advantage. The search engines, particularly Google, have been leaning more and more toward local search. Another reason is that people from one region tend to have quirks in language and thought that should be catered for. Subtle alterations to the page may improve your bounce and conversion rates.

Tags: keyword, locality, placing, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO
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Your Pre-SEO Checklist

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

When you first begin to look into search engine optimisation, there seems too much to do for your site’s SEO to wait. Taking a few moments, however, to perform a few pre-SEO checks and lay out some plans can save you a lot of time in the long run.

Analysis is a big part of the earliest stages of search engine optimisation, and you can talk to our experts at SEO Consult Australia about SEO analysis. This step is essential for forming some idea of the work that needs to be performed. Performing your own analysis will allow you to judge exactly how much time you need to invest in your SEO, and help when you do approach a professional for assistance. Here are some things to check:

The age of your domain. History factors in heavily in rankings, and it’s one thing that search engine optimization cannot fake. You might have some idea of your domain’s history, but it’s important to check the age of your domain formally. There are a number of free tools to help you do this.
Current index status. It’s vital to know where you are before you look to where you’re headed in any endeavour, and search engine optimization is no different. Look up where your pages currently sit in Google, Yahoo and Bing, as well as any other minor directories you plan to keep tabs on throughout your campaign
Existing inbound links. Your existing links will be supporting your current ranking. Changing them can change your ranking, although this is something you might have to do in the course of your SEO campaign. They can also provide you with ideas of who to approach for more links.
Your IP address history. The search engines will look at the other sites that are on your IP, and you should, too. It is usually a good idea to invest in a separate IP.
Canonicalisation. The URLs that are close to yours can provide a complication for your search engine optimization. The search engines treat different URLs differently, so referring to a page sometimes as www.example.com and sometimes as example.com or example.com/index can cause issues.
Existing cache of the site. The search engines cache a version of your website. This can prove helpful if you want to see how the search engines view your site in all its forms.
Possible site duplicates. Some site owners purchase a number of related URLs to protect their site address. The trouble is that temptation is strong to make use of those URLs by posting another version of your site. This causes duplicate content issues and will need to be fixed.
Black hat issues. Older forms of SEO can cause problems in the present as the techniques have since been blacklisted. Check through your site for hidden text, cloaking, or other SEO no-nos.
Existing traffic. Having an idea of what you attract before SEO will help you analyse your outcomes after your initial optimisation. It’s a good idea to log traffic for several months before you SEO.