SEO basics: Search Engine Optimisation explained

ICG's search engine optimisation (SEO) specialist, Steph Leeson, will be sharing her top tips and insights into the constantly evolving digital world, in a series of easy to understand and informative blog posts.

In her first entry, Steph gives an introduction to SEO while helping you understand some of the basics.

On average Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second (every second!), which equates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year. It's therefore obviously essential that your website is visible in the search engines and high up in rankings, so your website doesn't get lost in a very big crowd.

Your website is commonly referred to as your shop window and unlike the high street, you can't entice customers into your website with fancy shop windows or colourful point of sale. However, what you can do is invest in SEO which will ensure that customers can easily find you and will help attract customers to your website.

So, how can you ensure you rank higher in the search engines? I hear you ask. Well, there are several things you can do which will improve your Google position which I will discuss in more detail over the coming weeks, but here's a quick checklist to help you with the basics:

Keywords

You need to match the content on your website to what service you provide or what you sell. Users are looking for a specific product or service and if you don't tell Google what your website is about you wont be shown for the correct results. Remember - Google doesn't know what your website is about unless you tell them.

Link review

Do you get annoyed when the Oops this page cannot be displayed' message appears on a website? Well Google does too! If it comes across a broken link it won't be able to search through your website and will therefore stop searching.

User review

It's essential that you check to see if there are any user barriers on your website that could easily be fixed. Does your search' function work? Can you easily subscribe to newsletters? Make is easy for your users to navigate your site.

I hope you enjoyed my first blog - stay tuned for my next piece, which is all about the basics of Pay Per Click. If you have any questions regarding SEO, please feel free to drop me an email.

Thanks for reading!

Steph.

LINK:	http://www.icgonline.co.uk/blog/2015/05/05/seo-basics-search-engine-op...
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