Ten Top Tips for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Starters

Found at: http://www.semoz.com.au/ten-top-tips-for-seo-starters.htm

1. Know your market

When planning a Search Engine Optimisation project, you must have clear knowledge of the company’s marketplace and how each audience that you are targeting thinks.

2. Know your keywords

Before starting an SEO campaign, decisions need to be made about what keywords you aim to have highly ranked. It imperative that the keywords which you select are those that your audience is using, not the keywords that you think are important. Specific keywords are more likely to rank higher.

3. Don’t try to be all things to all people

If your approach is too generic, your pages up against too much competition to be even moderately successful.

4. Do some research – ensure there is a market

To understand your competitive market, including for the keywords that you intend to target, you need to do research. SEO experts have very effective methods for carrying out this research which can save you time and generate valid results.

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5. See the ‘big’ picture – don’t get overly distracted by technical details

The focus of effort for an SEO campaign needs to be viewed as a large, integrated activity – understanding the marketplace, targeting keywords, understanding how your online efforts integrate with offline efforts, branding, etc. While technical details are important, they will not deliver results unless they are grounded in the right ‘big picture’ strategies.

6. Understand the competition

Know where you stand versus your competition. Good intelligence can also be sourced from competitors – What are they doing? And if it works, why isn’t your company doing it?

7. Ask an SEO expert

SEO is a specialist area, and it takes time and skill just to stay up to date. Unless you have prior knowledge and experience, you will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to learn things from scratch. Despite the cost considerations, unless you are already an expert, the best strategy is to seek expert advice.

8. Don’t expect SEO to be easy

Like any other marketing activity, SEO is not a ‘set and forget’ task. You need to keep monitoring results and adjusting your approach.

9. Be patient – SEO results take time

Expecting quick results is a fundamental error. Management may be impatiently waiting to see a return on investment, but SEO ranking results can take weeks or even months to appear. When you launch a new site, it will take months for all pages to appear in the rankings. Evaluating results from an SEO project takes time.

10. Be ready to strike a balance between SEO and design

Bear in mind there that needs to be a tradeoff between SEO and website design. Expect resistance from designers because SEO strategies require the removal of search engine barriers from the website. But doing this may in turn detract from the site’s visual. For example, animation and imagery are the natural enemies of search engine ‘spiders,’ but a designer can argue with some justification that those so-called ‘barriers’ are actually important design elements.

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