Is search engine optimisation something we can do ourselves in-house?
/ 09 November 2009 - 11:09 am
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5 Comments
I’ve been learning a bit about the importance of search engine optimisation, and some of the basic ways it is achieved, e.g. relevant keywords in copy etc. There is some quite good information online and I have attended a couple of short seminars and feel like I understand the basics. It seems that commercial organisations are hiring SEO companies but clearly they are expensive. Should we attempt to manage SEO in-house or do you really have to outsource it if you want a decent job done? What would an SEO company do that we couldn’t do by updating the keywords in our content?
Comments
Bravo for getting to grips with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). It can have a big impact on your visibility and website visitor numbers.
If you are a typical arts marketer in a typical arts organisation, or you are a one-person business, then I have to say you are being quite optimistic by expecting to be able to manage SEO on your own. I’ve never succeeded yet! This is because in this industry we have so many competing priorities and are required to be Jacks (or Jackies?) of all trades. To be truly effective, SEO needs constant maintenance and adjustment.
Don’t let that discourage you though – you can certainly manage a one-off optimisation exercise in terms of adding keywords to the primary places throughout your site and ensuring that your website’s development and functionality are not creating any barriers to being picked up by search engines. This will help you get into the top ten rankings for relevant search terms.
But it’s when you want to maintain SEO on an ongoing basis that an external SEO company really comes into play. They are watching your rankings on a near-daily basis, observing what your competitors are doing, and keeping up with the most popular search terms in your industry. As a result they are able to pro-actively suggest tweaks to content and keywords that will keep your site high in the rankings.
A good place to start identifying key words that might be appropriate for your site is Google's Key Words https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
You can add your website's URL and have key words suggested based on the content on your page.
Or enter a key word e.g. 'fishing' and see related terms, volume of searches etc that people are actually using. That way you can select key words for your site that are actually being used as opposed to guessing what you think might be being searched on.
SEO should be an ongoing process that forms a core part of your business plan (assuming that web traffic is important to you). Like anything in business you can certianly try it yourself and some people do very well on their own. The challenge is that it takes time so if you don't have much spare than you'll have to pay for someone elses time.
It is worth educating yourself so that you have a good understanding of how SEO works. You can then make sure that your practises elsewhere are supporting your SEO efforts and you can manage an external provider if your resources allow.
We have relased a free Ebook "Millionaire Internet Marketers" which you can download from www.undergroundmarketing.co.nz. Whilst it is primarily based on the private sector the SEO principles very much apply to arts marketing.
The best way to approach SEO is to delivery as much value to your online target audience for the search terms that you wish to optimise for. If you deliver lots of online value then Google will see that your site is relevant to those searching on that term. Posting videos on Youtube, submitting articles, commenting on forums and getting links from 'authority' sites will all help progressively. It does take time and it needs to be ongoing.
I would like to know more about 'authority' sites. By this do we mean sites with a high google page ranking?
If so - what are some of the main tips for this - getting sites with a higher page rank, especially with a similiar theme or keywords, to link to you?
How do you find out what your page rank is and who should link to you? How important is this for SEO, and therefore how much time should we spend on it?
Also does anyone have suggestions or feedback on website graders – tools that grade you on things like traffic and SEO.
There a couple of great free Firefox addons that are useful website graders and will tell you your page rank. Check out
http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/ and
http://seoquake.com/
Also www.traffictravis.com has free software that is very good (Christchurch company).
Authority sites are sites that Google deems to be independent and are often less commercial. .govt and .edu are both great examples if you can get links from them.
Definitely the higher the page rank the better. Low quality links are not worth that much. Some paid directories can also be worthwhile such as Yahoo at US$299. (it shows Google you are serious).
However you are best to focus on generating good traffic to your site by creating links from sites where you add value. For example an art gallery may offer a free guide to buying art in their signature and comment on a blog in a way that adds value to the blog. However if you focus to much on the SEO and not on your potential audience then you miss the point which is really about looking after your target audience.
We are trialling some new software tomorrow that lets you search a term for sites that are authority sites and allow posting without nofollow links. If you send me a message via my contact form or www.undergroundmarketing.co.nz with your preferred search terms I'll see what it suggests. Hopefully it lives up to expectations.
In terms of time I think that quality links are the single most important thing to focus on. Submissions to forums, blogs and article directories will both generate traffic for your site and help a lot with SEO. Remember to target your link with the term you are optimising for rather than 'click here' where ever possible.