I often get asked by clients to help them achieve better visibility on the web. Now, that is what I do, so its a fair question. But its not always easy to do.

Often I am presented with a website that has been built to please the CEO or some other highly paid person in the company. However, a website should be pleasing to the end user. One of those end users could be a search engine. So I find myself dealing with a website that has not got any of the groundwork in place to aid in getting better rankings.

How does your site get higher rankings?

Your site’s rankings are determined by a wide variety of factors. I like to split them up as follows;

1. on page factors (what you do to your own site)
2. off page factors (what happens on other websites that link to you)
3. technical factors (like domain name, hosting, coding etc)

By far the most important one to achieve rankings is the second, off page factors. Its often called “link building”. However, that is not to say the on page elements are not important.

Consider the on page elements to be your preparation to paint the walls of your house. Cleaning, taping and perhaps an undercoat. The off page elements can be compared to the actual painting.Just remember, paint won’t stick on walls that were poorly prepared. So,… what you do to your own site, is the groundwork that needs to be done, to build a successful link building campaign.

Yet this groundwork is often overlooked. A site may be looking swanky, but have no header tags, or page titles. I often see URLs that do not support the keywords of the brand or product on the site. Domain names that do not represent the locality of the business and cheap hosting plans overseas. The list goes on….

How to avoid SEO problems?

Simple. Don’t ring the SEO after the website  / upgrade / overhaul is finished.

As a matter of fact, several people need to come together to build a successful website.

Who should be involved when you consider a new website?

1. The Digital Marketer to set the website objectives and understand the target audience
2. The SEO to research what the target audience search for, which keywords and key phrases to incorporate in the site. The keywords can drive the website architecture and overall structure of the site.
3. The Web Usability Expert to make sure there is a good flow of information and the end user does not get lost in a muddle of information and bad navigation.
4. The Designer to create a good looking site that meets the needs of the target audience as well as the SEO
5. The Developer to write the code and make sure all request all built to spec.
6. The Security Person to ascertain what protection is needed to prevent hacking.
7. The Digital Marketer again to develop a marketing strategy that drives traffic to your site
8. The SEO again to set up a good link building campaign that ensures you have a site people can find on Google

An SEO is not just someone who helps you to get links. And an SEO is also your consultant in preparation for getting a website that has the ability to rank highly on Google.

What About SEO in Personalized Google Search Results?

Have you heard the news yet?

Your Google Search Results Will Now Show Personalized Results.

How will this affect the rankings of your website?

How Personalized Search works

Google’s Web History allows you to view all the pages you have visited, including your Google Searches. Over time Google will deliver a more personalized search result as it can now draw from your search behaviour. Google takes note of the sites you have clicked on so your favourite sites will get a higher ranking on your next search.

For all of you who already had a google account, this has been happening since 2006. But now, Google has made this available for all users.  So no more need to be signed in.

Your search engine results Page (SERP) will only be affected for searches that relate to you web history of course of the last 180 days!!

Great! So the most relevant pages will achieve better rankings.

But how will this affect Search Engine Optimisation? Do you Still Need it?

Some concerns;

• Will a customer no longer be able to see your site if it already favours a competitor’s site?
• You may think you have excellent ranking whereas in fact, your search results page is skewed towards your own preferences…

SO, the rules of the games have just been changed a little

• You will no longer be able to see a consistent ranking
• For competitive keywords on-page optimisation and link building will become less important
• If you have a NEW website in a competitive industry, ranking will become exceptionally hard

Great Opportunities

• Most people will not be clicking on lousy websites anymore and they will slowly be pushed out. So good websites with great, relevant content will slowly move up the search results pages.
• In a personalized search result page, it is easier to stand out when a ‘new’ snippet appears. So new and fresh content from blogs, Twitter and Facebook will become more important.
• The relevancy of your snippets and meta descriptions in the Google Search Results Page will become even more important.
• You must now focus on the long-tail keywords as generic and single word keywords will be even more difficult to rank for.
• If you have regular repeat visitors you may actually find yourself get better rankings.

SEO- More than rankings

SEO is not just about achieving top 10 rankings.

SEO is also about the structure of your website and the user experience, its about getting ‘better’ traffic to your site, getting that traffic to ‘convert’.

Other elements like keyword research and selection are still very important and when ‘relevancy’ has just been given a new boost, the right keyword selection is seven more paramount.

….Of course, if you don’t like it you can always switch to BING or turn it off…

Click on the links below to see the screen shots of how to do that…