Long Tailing it to Success

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in it`s infancy was simply guesswork and waiting for Google and other bots to stop by and crawl your pages content, then return the bots findings to a central index. Then things changed..

Early SEO

Early SEO`s, generally webmasters, designers and site owners thought “great” a bit of a tweak here and there and i can manipulate Googles index into thinking that my website has the most relevant content, a few choice keywords well stuffed into the meta tags and continuously repeat them using the same colour as the background on my page and hey presto! my site is at number 1!

Googlebot got smart pretty quick

Dammit Mr Googlebot thought, that site just fooled me into thinking that they offered the cheapest holiday packages, when in actual fact they were selling cheap suitcases. I best rearrange my algorithm and look out for sites that use hidden text or stuff their meta tags full of keywords, better still drop that meta description and keyword meta tag and concentrate on the text within the page.

In a nutshell Google now uses over 200 ranking factors when determining whether your page will be served back to the searcher for your keyword or phrase, without any inside knowledge whatsoever i can guarantee that a good percentage of those factors are looking for Black and grey hat seo techniques.

No Secrets

There is no secret formula to gaining a number 1 position for whatever keyword or keyphrase you are targeting, the only difference now compared to 1995 is that you have millions more websites competing for exactly the same keywords and phrases.

How do you compete?

The short and sweet answer is the “longtail search”, which basically implies being a bit more diverse to target your visitors. The original trail would have led you down, cheap holidays, holiday packages, cheap holiday packages and so on, the longtail search is cheap holidays to Spain, Greece Package Holidays, cheap package holidays to Italy.

The Longtail Search

These longtail searches are directly targeting those that will be searching for those keyphrases, the longtail places more emphasis on a more diverse phrase and your content should reflect those searches, again this has to be within the content of the landing page and in moderation. If you are looking deep and hard for good keyword density percentages, then forget it, you will not find it anywhere, just be sure to not over do it, there are keyword tools to measure keyword density, but they have no affiliation with any search engine nor do they have a holy grail of keyword density percentage. What they do know though is how much is too much and should be used as a guide only and not a percentage marker to aspire to.

So what makes a good SEO?

The opinions are as varied as there are websites on the net. There is no one direct answer. You could join in the discussion yourself on Googles Webmaster Central Blog and read what SEO`s have commented on so far, (including me) but that will bring you back to the question of how do i know what i am doing is the right way, when there are no guides?

SEO within web design

The web design market is flooded with design firms competing for your business, when writing this i performed a quick search and there are 240,000,000 websites listed for “web design“. So what are the chances of a new firm competing on the net today? Better than you think as it happens! Why? Simply because the savvy designer will target local searches like “Web Design Sunderland” or “Web Design tyne and wear“, you get the idea. There is businesses out there that are smarter than your average bear and they will look locally before looking further afield.

SEO requirements

SEO has climbed the list of requirements for those seeking web design companies today, they know that a web presence is now vital if the sales are to continue in the right direction. As sales are driven and targeted so must you SEO efforts, the best salesmen and women did not just walk into the top spots, they learned their craft and honed it, understanding that it would take time before results came. SEO is exactly the same, results driven and time served experience that can sometimes take a couple of years before it begins to bare fruit, depending on the keywords and phrases you are targeting.