SEO FAQ
Anyone who has ever looked into SEO will know there's a lot of information out there, but reliable information isn't quite as easy to come by.
We've put our heads together and compiled this SEO FAQ, designed to help you understand the SEO process and terminology better.
Frequently asked questions
- What is search engine optimisation (SEO)?
- What is an algorithm?
- What is a keyword or key phrase?
- How do you know which keywords to target?
- What are SERPs?
- Do I need to submit my site to Google?
- Do meta tags help SEO?
- Is the domain name important in SEO?
- What is black hat SEO?
- What are the benefits of having a sitemap?
- What does robots.txt do?
- What does htaccess do?
- What is URL canonicalization?
- What's the best way to redirect a page or site?
- What is Google PageRank?
- What is a reciprocal link?
- What is anchor text?
- Can Google read Flash?
What is search engine optimisation (SEO)?
Search engine optimisation is the practice of optimising a website in order to attain a higher position in the search engine results pages for its relevant keywords.
Optimisation consists of on-page changes (tweaking text, on-site links, organisation of information) and off-page changes (link development, social media).
An algorithm is a set of mathematical rules used to determine which pages should be returned for each search, and in which order they should be displayed.
What is a keyword or key phrase?
A keyword (sometimes referred to as a key phrase or key term) is anything you enter into the search box in Google or any other search engine. Search engine optimisers will target these keywords when optimising your website.
How do you know which keywords to target?
Through the process of keyword research, we can uncover a range of mainstream and long-tail keywords and refine this list to give us a starting model for which keywords to target. There are a number of tools and methods we use to do this.
SERPs is an anagram referring to Search Engine Results Pages. Put simply, it's the page of results that appears after you perform a search in Google or any other search engine.
Do I need to submit my site to Google?
In short, no. Manual submission is an outdated practice and is simply not necessary for a proficient optimiser. A far better method would be to create an XML sitemap and to make Google aware of this through the Google Webmaster Console.
No, generally not. In the early days of SEO, meta tags were a vital tool but nowadays they're just too easy to exploit. However, meta tags are still necessary for your site's code to validate properly and not using them correctly could lead to penalties.
Is the domain name important in SEO?
If you're setting up a new website and haven't yet registered a domain, we'd recommend choosing one which incorporates your primary keyword. This is especially important for Yahoo and MSN. However, if you have an established domain and website, this is likely to be far more powerful than any benefit you'd get from changing your domain.
Black hat SEO, broadly speaking, is one of two schools of thought on SEO. Believe it or not, the other one is white hat SEO! Black hat SEO comprises of tricks designed to fool Google into ranking a website higher. Needless to say, this always results in the site being banned from the search engines.
What are the benefits of having a sitemap?
An XML sitemap acts like a contents page for the search engine spiders. It allows them to see a list of every page on your website along with details on when it was last updated and the order in which pages should be crawled. This minimises the time Google must spend on your site and allows for easy, effective crawling and indexing.
A robots.txt file is placed on the root of your server and tells search engines which parts of your site it can and cannot visit (and subsequently index). Legitimate uses of robots.txt might include stopping search engines indexing testing areas of your site or content inside the secure members' area.
Htaccess is a very powerful tool which runs on the Apache platform (commonly used on Linux servers). It allows the webmaster to perform a number of functions, including rewriting URLs safely (See: What's the best way to redirect a page or site?) and avoiding canonical URL problems (See: What is URL canonicalization?).
It can also be used to rewrite dynamic URLS as part of content management systems and resides in the root of the server as a file called '.htaccess'.
Although Google may be built on some of the strongest super-computers and technological foundations known to man, it still suffers with a few basic headaches. Canonical URL problems occur when your website can be reached by using both the http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com variants. This can cause problems in Google, which sometimes sees them as two different sites. Using .htaccess, you can tell the server to permanently redirect one to the other.
What's the best way to redirect a page or site?
There are many forms of redirect - the two most common being 301 and 302 redirects (named after the header code they return). A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect which says 'this content is currently at location x but keep both locations indexed as it will move back shortly'. A 301 redirect tells the referrer (i.e. a search engine) that the content has moved permanently to its new location and to ignore all references to the old location.
Google PageRank is one of the most discussed areas of SEO with many differing views and opinions. Put simply, it's a measure of a page's popularity based on the links it has pointing to it. However, the true PageRank value of a page is never visible to us mere mortals and should only be taken with a pinch of salt.
A reciprocal link is an arragement whereby you link to site x and, in return, site x links back to you. This method of linkbuilding has been greatly devalued by Google and a high ratio of reciprocal links can cause problems.
The anchor text of a link is the text which forms the hyperlink itself.
Although Google are making progress in this area, it's safe to assume not. Only use Flash where it is absolutely necessary. Most Flash functions can be repeated with CSS and a sprinkling of JavaScript.
