There are two sides to search engine promotion—“organic” search engine results, and paid (“pay-per-click”) advertising. In this article, we are just going to focus on your “organic” search results—the way your website is ranked on its own merits. This is the best place for you to start because it’s free.

We are assuming here that you have control over the content of your website—either because you’ve written it yourself, or because you’re using a content management system of some kind. In an ideal world, you’ll have control of all these facets of your web pages:

• “Head” Title, or Meta Title. The title as it appears on the titlebar of your browser.
• Meta Description and Keywords. You won’t see these in your web page, but they are hidden “tags” or instructions in your page that search engines can read.
• The content, or “body” of your page. This is obviously the main area of your page with all the juicy stuff in it.

Stepping back for a moment: how do search engines work?

Just for a bit, let’s look at the absolute basics. A search engine exists to help people find web pages that are the most relevant to a topic they are interested in. The searcher describes her topic to the search engine by typing in one or more key words. The job of the search engine is then to list webpages which might be relevant to those words, with pages that are likely to be most relevant shown first.

So our job—we who write web pages—is then twofold:

1. We need to second-guess the words people might use when searching for the kind of information/product/service our page is providing.
2. Then we need to demonstrate to search engines that our page really is relevant to those words, or “search terms”.

The first stop is fairly straightforward. If you’re a mobile hairdresser, you’re going to be relevant for people looking for “mobile hairdresser”, and also possibly for “mobile hairdresser sheffield”, “local haircut”, and so on. What words would you use to find your product or service? I’m sure you get the idea. While you’re doing your brainstorm of search terms, you should think about their relative importance. The mobile hairdresser might decide that the words “mobile hairdresser sheffield” are more important to the meaning of her page than “local hairut” for example.

Once you’ve got your list of possible search terms written down and put in order of relative importance, you need to work these into your page.

General principles:

• Your keywords and description should relate to each specific page. Don’t repeat them across each page of your site. Every page has different content and is an opportunity to attract people looking for different search terms.
• Don’t try so hard to load your pages and descriptions with keywords that they become uncomfortable to read. Write for human readers.

Description:

• The Description should be a succinct sentance which describes the content of that page.
• Aim to use 150 characters or fewer. This will help your complete description to be shown in search results.
• Include two or three words in the description which you think people might be searching for in relation to that page.
• Try to include an offer, guarantee, and perhaps a phone number to invite an instant call.
• The Description should be unique to that page. It’s not a description of the whole site—with the possible exception of the description for your home page, which you might decide needs to provide an overview of the whole site.

Keywords:

• Keywords are to show which search terms your page is relevant to.
• Use single words, separated by commas, eg. “cotswold, cotswolds, holidays”.
• Try to second guess the words people might use in search engines to find you, and include them.
• Some keywords might be common to many pages, but try to have some on each page that are unique.
• Try to include the most important keywords in the body of your page and also in the description.
• If you can fit some keywords into headings or bold text on your page, great – but don’t worry too much about this.
• These days, keywords are much less important than good descriptions and good page content. Put 98% of your effort into the description and the page’s content, and don’t waste time with more than about 10 good keywords.

Titles

There are generally at least two types of title on a web page:

1. There is the “Meta” Title, which you can’t see on the page itself, but in the title bar of your browser. The Meta Title is often used when somebody bookmarks your page.
2. Then there is the visible Main Heading for your page.

If somebody sees your page listed in some search results, it will be the Meta Title they will see. So use it wisely, as you know you will have these few words to entice someone to click through and read your page. Good Meta Titles will be exciting, intriguing and will make visitors want to find out more.

The Main Heading of your page is noticed by search engines, and you should try to write at least one or two of your main keywords into it. However, you also need to make sure it’s a good heading for your human readers—giving them a one sentence overview of the page, and to sound interesting enough that they’ll want to read on.

Summing up

Here then are the most important tips summarized from this article:

• Write for humans first. Don’t stuff your writing so full of repeated keywords that it makes boring reading. Be interesting! Always write in a simple, direct and friendly way.
• Think of one or two phrases (of 1-3 words each) for each page that you think visitors may be searching for when looking for what your page offers. The words from these phrases will be your main keywords.
• Try to work your main keywords into your headings, titles, lists, description and keywords.
• Try to make your meta description and meta title as exciting or intriguing as possible, enticing people to your page. Phone numbers in meta descriptions can be great—encouraging people to contact you before even reading your page.

I hope this is plenty of information to get you started. If you need more help, please get in touch.