Search Engine Optimisation 101 – Part 5: How NOT to optimise your website

Rankings are important. That means that search engine optimisation is important.
If you’re just starting out, it’s likely you have done a search recently for advice on search engine optimisation. Were you looking for a search engine optimisation company? Did you discover that there are a lot of articles out there that are completely outdated? The world of Search Engine Marketing constantly changes. You need to catch up just to keep up!
Here’s some things that used to be really cool in Search Engine Marketing that right now are… well… old school.

• Buying Backlinks
  Other sites linking to your site as one of authority is an important step in getting your website ranked highly. It used to be that you could buy these links through a process called ‘back linking’. Don’t bother with this anymore. Google will penalise you for using these services and your website will drop faster than Grace’s necklace off the titanic.
• Meta tags
  They’re practically useless these days but people still put them in ‘just in case’. Google does not look to meta tags for information about where to rank a website anymore but it could look to the meta tag title and description areas. If you’re going to spend some time filling out your meta tag information, focus on the title and description.
• Not diversifying your keywords
  Thank goodness! Long gone are the days when a keyword would be put into an article 20 or so times, completely to the detriment of the reader! Still, the usual practice was to focus on one or two keywords in an article in order not to ‘dilute’ the keyword phrase density.

  It’s still a good idea to keep your keywords focussed but Google uses a much more sophisticated method of measuring the relevance of articles now. One theory suggests that Google looks for related keywords. For instance, if you discuss building construction, you would expect words like concrete and cranes and health and safety to also be in the article.

  Focus on a set of keyword phrases. Remember though that the most important element is real and engaging content which will naturally include the words Google is looking for to validate the authority of your site. We’ll discuss more about that in the next article.

• Ignoring User Experience
  If your website is slow or you have broken links or people don’t like visiting it, you can be sure it’s going to rank low. Google measures things like bounce rates and navigation time to determine which websites are actually providing fantastic user experience and using those metrics to boost the rank of websites.

  So if your website has fluoro colours, links that are difficult to read or just looks like something created by your son for a high school project – redesign your website!

• Google Keyword Toolbox
  Google doesn’t use Toolbox or Traffic estimator anymore. It’s all been rolled into the Google Keyword Planner. You will need an AdWords account to gain access – you can also use your Gmail account if you have one. If you haven’t checked out this tool in a while, it’s definitely time that you jumped on and had a look around.
• Ignoring Social Media
  Any search engine optimisation specialist knows that social media is here to stay. Likes and +1’s and retweets now, officially, matter – not just to humans but to search engines. It’s Google’s way of using real people to alert it to the quality of a website and the content it’s producing. Which brings us to point 7…
• Not Having Mobile Websites As Well
  Mobile platforms are the Next Big Thing if you hadn’t heard already. Google looks to see if you’ve made your website friendly for their searchers on smaller more nimble platforms. There’s an art to making sure your mobile website rocks, so don’t fudge this one. Get the mobile website professionals to help you out.
• Keeping Your Website ‘Just The Same As Always’
  Google wants to show its customers to freshest information possible so it ranks those websites with constantly updating information higher than those that are static. If you are not utilising a blog to update information about your website or have a plan for regular updates to the content of your website, you are missing out on potential rankings.

Don’t worry if you’ve been exposed as an SEO Old-Timer! Complete Cloud is on top of the search engine optimisation trends – let us work on your website search engine optimisation strategy with you, to bring real value to your business marketing efforts. Next up in our 101 Series – diverse content that does work to boost your SEO rankings!

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