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Search engine optimisation uk is the process of modifying your website content and meta tags to improve the ranking of pages. Meta tags include certain HTML tags (title, heading, emphasized text, keywords and description), as well as the internal (links between pages) and external (links between pages on different sites) link structure of a website.
Impact of High Search Engine Rank on Sales
Internet market research estimates that between 70% and 90% of online shoppers use search engines to look for a specific product or service. We need to consider the relationship between factors that influence sales to evaluate the impact of search engine optimisation.
Three metrics are required to forecast online sales: the average ticket, the conversion rate, and the amount of site traffic. The average ticket is the amount of money spent by a customer on a typical transaction. Computer and electronics stores have high average tickets (hundreds or thousands of dollars), while bookstores have low average tickets (tens of dollars). The amount of site traffic is the number of site visitors, typically expressed as the number of page views per month. Finally, conversion rate is the number of sales divided by the number of page views, expressed as a percentage.
Let’s look at an example. A Red Widget has an average ticket of £25, a conversion rate of 2%, and gets 5,000 page views per month. The estimated monthly sales are £2,500. A high search engine rank will increase the number of page views and increase sales. In this example, if traffic doubles to 10,000 page views a month, Red Widget sales will double as well (to £5,000).
Keep in mind that a high search engine ranking will produce a measurable increase in traffic only if there is significant marketplace interest in Red Widgets and your website appears in the first twenty search results.
However, search engine optimisation uk is not going to produce measurable results if there is very little demand for Red Widgets. The number one spot in search result pages is not particularly impressive if only two people search for “Red Widgets” each week.
Role of Keywords
Keywords are words or phrases provided to search engines to locate information. Search engines examine page content to determine whether that page is relevant for a particular search word or phrase. Thus, effective keyword selection is one of the most important factors of search engine optimisation.
Each keyword is characterised by supply (number of search engine result pages) and demand (number of searches). The easiest way to improve search engine ranking is to select keywords that have favourable supply/demand characteristics (that is, ones with a relatively high demand and a relatively low supply). It is much more difficult to improve the search engine position of a page on a high supply, competitive keyword.
Good keywords must be relevant to your product line, as well as your line of business. A #1 rank for “blue widgets” is worthless if you sell taupe widgets exclusively. If a site visitor finds your page, quickly discover that you don’t sell any blue widgets, and promptly go elsewhere. In effect, the conversion rate for irrelevant search engine hits is very close to zero.
Using Keywords Effectively
Choosing a set of target keywords is the first step in search engine optimisation. The second step is using them in the body, title, headings, and meta-tags of a page.
Include the target keywords in the text of the page. Do not overdo it though - the keywords should fit smoothly into the surrounding text. Search engines use several techniques to detect excessive keyword density (many keywords stuffed into very little supporting text) and will reduce the ranking accordingly. A page has too many keywords if they interfere with the general flow of the text on a page and appear to be out of place.
The title tag should contain information that describes the page. Unless you operate a multi-national that is a household name, our companies name is not a descriptive title. Most search engines use the title tag as the first line of your listing in the search engine result pages. Strive to make your title tag is attractive enough to tempt prospective customers to click through to your site.
Incorporate keywords into the headings on the page, as well as into emphasized sections (italic, bold, large text). Even though search engines are de-emphasizing descriptive meta-tags, include keywords in them regardless. The description meta tag should have an accurate description of your page, and the keywords meta tag should contain a set of keywords (separated by commas) that list relative key concepts mentioned on the page.
Understanding the basics of search engine optimisation is an important first step in creating a well optimised web site.
Metamotion - search engine optimisation uk
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