While it’s important to recognise that SEO isn’t the be-all and end-all of website ownership, it’s what will affect the long-term success of the website. Unfortunately, SEO is a difficult thing to perfect: there are hundreds of internal and external factors that can decide the fate of a website, some of which are out of our control, and this occasionally leads to people becoming disillusioned with the concept of SEO as a whole, since it seems to be such a random and uncertain field.

However, website owners who neglect SEO are losing out on opportunities to rise to the top of Search Ranking, especially regarding ‘internal SEO’, which refers to page content and site elements that can affect your ranking significantly. Some of these are proven (content duplication, as an example, has a negative effect on SEO), others are difficult to verify (domain age may affect SEO) and a small amount are more controversial among SEO nerds, as it’s difficult to observe what they do. Here’s some clear examples of how page elements can affect your search ranking

Original Content
If you write regular content as part of a content writing scheme (usually blogs and social media), making sure that it hits a few requirements can really reward your company in the long run. Content needs to be original. Google can figure out if you’re copying older work or someone else’s content whole cloth, and it will rank you lower as a result. The line between plagiarisation and originality is a fine one, but as long as you’re not copying too much from your own (or other people’s) work, Google will treat it as original content and rank it accordingly.

Another tripping point for many companies producing content like this is that they resort to a robotic, keyword-laden writing style to achieve the best possible SEO ranking – or that’s what they think will happen. In reality, Google can tell the difference between content written by and for humans, and content written for website crawlers in a cynical attempt to rise up the ranks. Write for people first and web crawlers second, and Google will rank your posts higher.

Keywords
Keywords are practically an artform in and of themselves, as they dictate how users of search engines are going to find your content, and how Google will rank that content. Too many writers fall into the trap of using vague keywords, already well-used by more established competitors; for example, using ‘insurance’ as a keyword means that you’re up against other insurance companies around the world, all competing for the same keyword.

Localising your keywords (e.g. insurance darlington) or including more information about your field (e.g. car insurance darlington) means that you have a keyword used by a much smaller group of competitors, and searches by people in Darlington will see your website near the top.

Metadata
Metadata encompasses many aspects of how your SEO is calculated, and any serious blogging effort needs it. Things like headers, the page URL, meta-descriptions and titles should be tailored around your keyword, short enough to fit on a search query (titles should be 60 characters or less, meta-desc. should be 140 or less) and be enticing to people who search for content like yours.

Google pays extra close attention to these things, so getting them right is extremely important if you want your content to rank higher than your competitors.

This is part of an ongoing series about the site elements that can affect your search ranking, and we’ll go into some web design methods to use or avoid next time. Chetaru is a Web Design Agency based in Darlington that provides the IT know-how that your firm needs to succeed and thrive, from beautiful responsive websites to economical SEO campaigns and useful mobile Apps.

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