Morag Lecture - SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

In this lecture Morag talked about the use of SEO and how it helps with making websites more relevant and noticed in search engines like Google.

It is crucial to show that there is an understanding of the use of SEO and how it helps the site to be found on search engines.

Search engines like Google seems to like sites that have established names, are frequently used with regular updates, this is very helpful if there is a blog attached to the website.

SEO – getting traffic for your website

Domain name - make it relevant too the business for me this is Jade VR Creative so my domain name will have that somewhere in it.

Trading name - my actual name or business name depending what name I wish too use while I am trading.

Email that matches - this makes the business look more professional as my business name is Jade VR Creative it only makes sense to have that incorporated in my emails address somehow or some form of what type of creative art i do.

Have changing content - always change content even if its regular blog posts or changing up the sequences or information, or even adding more work to the site. Needs some signal that the site is regularly used.

Who is hosting you? How many servers do they have/backups - if possible have your own backup of your site, do some research into people who can host your site and make sure they have more than one server incase something was too go wrong.

Pop ups – SEO doesn’t like them - I personally do not care for pop-ups but some sites do use them, but the search engine optimisation does not work along side pop-ups.

Landing screens – they don’t seem to be very professional and do not work too well for photographers.

Making sure the site is mobile friendly (more stuff is searched on tablets and mobile than on computer screens).

SEO –

What is the SEO to reach?

Get more clients.

Attract the right clients.

Grow your business to a point where you can charge the fees you deserve.

Scale back paid marketing activities.

Come up first on Google and look like you’re the best in your area.

Google –

Google algorithms looked for pages ranking.

The number and quality of links to a page help it’s ranking.

These links rank the pages importance.

Google logs traffic to a site.

Test it – refresh and view your site (once optimised) from multiple computers, using different search terms to find it.

Title Tags –

Title tags are crucial in having your website found.

Shows at the top of browser window.

Appears in search engine results.

Keep title tags to 50 – 60 characters (this changes, so keep an eye on advice form Google).

Avoid duplication – make each page unique and descriptive and relevant for page content.

Title Description –

Describes your site on Google to potential clients.

Makes important pages searchable in Google using SEO.

Short paragraphs to advertise content.

150 – 260 character will display.

Avoid duplication of content on multiple pages (make each page unique and relevant).

SEO in on Wix –

Make key search phrases.

Can put key words for pages – not as important.

Google likes relevant content on the pages that is on the title description.

Alt Text –

Text showing what the image is for those who are sight impaired, if an image fails to load and for web crawlers.

Alt text or alternative text is crucial to getting image heavy sites found.

Location of image (top of the page carries more importance).

Dimensions (larger images are more important).

Do not ‘cram’ with search terms, must be in sentences (think of visually impaired when writing).

Time consuming to add all the Alt text into the site.

Content –

Make sure that all content is relevant.

Write content for humans not web crawlers.

Avoid lists, put information in full sentences.

Create useful information – rich site content.

Produce fresh content regularly.

Page Headings –

Web crawlers pay more attention to page headers than body text.

Use large headings (H1) and sub headings (H2 or H3) above any body text; this will be more search engine friendly.

Try and load important search terms into page headings and subheadings. You can punctuate long paragraphs with H1 or H2 headings, using key phrases to aid optimisation.

Keywords –

Make sure all keywords are relevant to your content or business

Each page should have different keywords, relevant to their content

Create keyword rich content in full sentences (for a human reader).

Linking your site to others –

Links to and from your site increase traffic.

Links to your site are the most important.

All links should be relevant, do not ‘buy’ links from dodgy SEO companies (Google frowns on this practise).

Internal links from quality or popular pages important (social media sites, popular blogs, larger businesses, directory sites etc.).

Internal Links –

Internal page links are important.

Page anchors help SEO when correctly named (corresponding with page titles or content).

Google ranks websites by time spent on the website and how many clicks made (the more clicks the better), internal links shows that a viewer is actively engaged with your page so staying on the page longer. This is excellent SEO.

I will start incorporating the SEO and Alt text into my website, if anything I will work not he SEO the most and make sure that is in place and I like how my website looks when it is published and shown. Then I would slowly work on doing the Alt text on ym site as well.

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