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Posts Tagged ‘On Page SEO’

What The Search Engines Look For In Content

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

The rules of search engine optimisation change all the time. If there’s one thing that the history of SEO reveals, it’s that there’s constantly something new coming in and altering the game. In the midst of all of these changes, however, there is one thing that, strangely, doesn’t seem to alter: the importance of text-based content to your SEO plan.

The reason for this is easy enough to discern. The search engines have changed a lot over the years but they are still, at heart, the same machines they were when the search industry first started. They still base their searches on what they can find in your code, and they are still far more comfortable with text than any other form of communication. Text-based content is still essential for your site’s communication with the search engines.

To this end, your SEO consultant is likely to push you to up the amount of quality content on your site. Some companies are understandably resistant to this. Content takes a fair amount of investment, but it is essential to your site’s search engine optimisation. You can discuss this with us at SEO Consult Australia. This is all the more reason to find out what the search engines are looking for in your content.

Cut-and-paste content. As pointed out above, the search engines are far more comfortable with text-based content than they are with any other form. Text-based means coded, not embedded in Flash, a PDF or an image.
Quality of content. Far too many sites use computer text generators to churn out the hundreds of pages they need to get a weighty site. The high literacy rates of internet users mean that they can spot computer-generated content a mile away. This content will put users off, which will bring your ranking down as your bounce rate rises.
Unique content. Again, many sites simply cut and paste the content of one page to another. This happens most often with retail sites, where a manufacturer’s product description is the easiest option to describe the 15 types of women’s runners that you want separate pages for. Cutting and pasting in this case is a bad move for two reasons. The first is that you’re duplicating content all over your site. The search engines will only choose one page of duplicated content to feature in the index, and you have no control over which one they choose. This means your nicely designed page which is part of your search engine optimisation plan could be passed over.

The second reason cutting and pasting manufacturer product descriptions is a bad idea in particular is because everyone selling that product is doing the same thing. This means that the content is duplicated in thousands of places all over the net. When the search engines decide which two duplicated copies to feature, what do you think your chances are of being chosen?
Well-presented content. There is such a thing as too much optimisation. Content cluttered up with too much SEO can put search engines off.

Tags: content, On Page SEO, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO
Posted in SEO Copywriting | No Comments »

What Google Measures On Your Site

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

There’s a lot of information on search engine optimisation techniques that are likely to work for your site. There’s much less information on why and how these techniques work, which makes optimising for yourself a little harder. There’s even less information on the thing you really need to know to optimise your site, which is what the search engines are looking for when they assess a website.

Without information on all of the probable aspects of your site Google is likely to assess, it’s much harder to work out what to do for SEO. Most SEO pros are familiar with the ins and outs of Google’s assessment methods by virtue of experience, but this information doesn’t tend to be shared for some reason. Talking to a professional can be a great help, and you can come to us at SEO Consult Australia. Here are a few of the aspects of your site that Google and the other search engines are likely to measure.

Information about the site itself

The first thing a search engine will look at is your site. This is why most search engine optimisation campaigns begin with on-page work. Most companies assume that the search engines will examine mostly on-page factors, but this isn’t so. They also look at the domain registration information as a part of their quality assessment.

Things measured include:

Date of registration of the domain name, as well as the renewal periods
Oldest page on the site, which will be taken as a measure of site history
Newest page on the site, which will be taken as a measure of frequency of updates
Contact information
Server information, including geographical location and server neighbour sites which might affect your site’s quality rating
Hosting information, including history of host

Information about your site’s users

Another area the search engines measure is how your users behave when they are on your site. This is another measure of quality, which is fed back into your rankings assessment. If your search engine optimisation tactics succeed in making your site look great to search engine spiders, yet your bounce rate remains high, the search engines use assessment of user behaviour to detect when something’s off.

Things to think about include:

The click-through rate for individual listings in the search engine results
Time spent on pages by individual users, including your bounce rate
Entry and exit points
Users who bookmark your site

Information about your site off your pages

Anyone who has undergone the search engine optimisation process will be familiar with the importance of off-page SEO. Often, what you do off your pages can take more time and bring more rewards than what you do on your pages. A lot of this work involves boosting your reputation around the net. The more solid your reputation around the net, the more chance you have of gaining and maintaining a good ranking.

The search engines measure these off-page factors: