Tag: search engines

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SEO Techniques

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is targeting traffic to a website using the search engine’s organic rankings (position on the Search Engine’s Result Page).

To get a website to appear on a search engine page so that the site has more views, there is the paid sponsored (inorganic) option and an organic option. The paid options are listed at the top of the search page and are marked with an indicator. The top organic sites are listed after the paid sites. These search results are presented as an ordered list. The number one position will typically receive 40-60% of the traffic, with the next places receiving less traffic with only 2-3% searches going on to the next page.  

SEO is the method to get a website to appear higher on the organic list. SEO techniques include:

  • Keywords

Look at the competitor’s keywords. These can be included on the website if appropriate. Long-tail keywords have accumulative effect on raising search ranking as more relevant higher quality pages are retrieved. Eg search for “holiday sports western australia” will retrieve more websites than the long-tailed search keywords – “holidays spots western australia near ocean cheap” but the latter has more relevance and authority.

  • High Quality Content

Improve the quality of the content of the website. Websites with high-quality content appear higher on the search engine list. Content needs to be kept relevant and up-to-date.

  • Backlink Building, Internal Links and Broken Links

Websites that are linked from other websites are deemed as being of higher quality as they are “trusted”. The website owner can improve the SEO if they can get other websites to link to them by joining or signing up to clubs, organisations, directories, other sites. A website that is full of broken links, irrelevant permalinks and not enough internal links will be rated lower by SEO.

  • On-page Optimisation

Incorporate keywords in the meta tags, title, alt to describe images. Have these keywords match the content of the page to improve SEO.

  • Site Architecture Optimisation

A website’s SEO can be improved by having key pages linked to internally with relevant anchor text. An XML sitemap can aid the search engine to find internal pages.

  • Semantic Markup

Semantic markup such as that in schema.org can improve the click-through-rate (CTR) which is the ratio of times advertisement is clicked whenever it is shown.

  • Mobile Responsive

Google gives responsive sites higher rankings in SERPs.

  • Page Speed

Higher speed pages have higher SEO

To add keywords to a website enter the following under the <head> tag insert the tag:

                                <meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1, keyword2, keyword3”/>

Matching keywords is not the only criteria for ranking but it is one of the most important. Search engines also base their ranking algorithms on relevance, authority, usefulness, loading speed and more. Google has over 200 ranking factors. Google and other search engines aim to list the “best” relative, trustworthy, and authoritative web sites.

References

What is search engine optimization (SEO)? (2021) Optimizely. Available at: https://www.optimizely.com/optimization-glossary/search-engine-optimization/ (Accessed: 17 March 2024).

Bennet, K. (2017) How to add keywords to HTML, Small Business – Chron.com. Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/add-keywords-html-44119.html (Accessed: 16 March 2024).

Seo, Content Marketing, & Link Building Strategies (2024a) Backlinko. Available at: https://backlinko.com/ (Accessed: 16 March 2024).

Walden, H. (2023) 13 advanced SEO techniques you need to start using right now, Elegant Themes Blog. Available at: https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/wordpress/advanced-seo-techniques (Accessed: 17 March 2024).

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Pay-Per-Click Advertising

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Pay-per-click involves an organisation paying for advertising when an advertisement link is clicked. The pay-per-click model is usually offered by search engines such as Google or social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. When a customer uses a search engine by entering keywords they are presented with two types of links – inorganic (pay-per-click) and organic links. The paid advertisement (sponsored inorganic links) are displayed at the top of the search page.

Search engine Google has a complex algorithm to determine which paid advertisements appear on a search page and in what order. Google allows organisations to purchase spots on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) as a sponsored listing. Google displays sponsored listings based on the keywords in the search, the customer’s previous search history, and bidding . The customer can set a monthly budget, when to pay, bidding options, Bidding options are based on the advertising goals of the advertiser which could be sales, visits, brand awareness, views.

Some factors in determining which advertisements appear and in what order are:

  • The bid price from the advertiser – the highest price does not necessarily make the top spot on the advertisers list.
  • Relevance – the web pages listed on the search page matches the search keywords and customer history.
  • Quality of advertisement and quality score – advertisements with bad history have lower priority
  • Platform – some advertisements are more suited to specific platforms.
  • Advertisement formats and extensions – additional features such as links, phone numbers and ratings may affect ranking

Pay-per-click uses keywords to match an advertisement to a customer that is actively searching for matching content. The search engine gets revenue from the advertiser when the customer clicks on an advertisement . The advertiser gains from pay-per-click when the revenue achieved from sales derived from the clicks exceeds the overall cost of the clicks. Google and other search engines aim to get the highest revenue and use algorithms to select the best most-productive advertisements. The algorithm may select a lower bid price advertisement for higher quality and more relevant keyword matching when the advertisement is more likely to result in a sale.

References

Björnfot, Q., & Dehlin, M. (2023). Comparing the Return on Investment of Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click marketing: Developing a model to forecast the ROI of SEO based on the SOSTAC Planning System. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1799554/FULLTEXT01.pdf.

Search Engine Land. (2024, February 2). How the PPC ad auction works. https://searchengineland.com/guide/ppc/how-the-ppc-ad-auction-works#:~:text=Here’s%20an%20overview%20of%20how,the%20ad%20copy%20and%20design).