Website optimisation
from SEO linguistic profiling to creating content Google likes
Website optimisation takes into account a lot of what was discussed in the last chapter. If you already have a website that has been designed for you or you have had it for a while you may need to have a long hard analysis of your site and how well optimised it is in relevance to your keywords needed. Relational SEO linguistics can play a role here but for this stage, we will hold on to that thought.
Your website needs to reflect the business, charity, cause, or image you want to portray, and you need to think about including the keywords you need that go along with this strategy.
Once you have your keywords where should they go? Well, there are different schools of thought on this. One is that it should be part of the meta-tagging which is part of the programming. Now some websites and magazines say that is less important than it used to be and that may be the case, but the problem is some web design companies take this too literally and say it is not important at all. The key is the term “less” important than it used to be. It does not say it is not important at all it is just “less” important than it used to be. So, my school of thought is that it is far better to include something that is less important but still may have some relevance. So include it even if you are told otherwise. It is far better to have something and not need it than not to have it and need it. At least that’s the way my mind figures it.
If you want your keywords included in your meta-tagging, you will either have to learn HTML/programming or get someone to do it for you. Some content management systems can make it easy to do this yourself with some basic training.
Becoming more and more important as Internet and search engine technology changes happen is the actual content or copy or the website. This needs to include your keywords and phrases as part of the explanation of what you do and where you operate. You could just include a long list of keywords or phrases as part of the copy, but this is not recommended because if the search engine does not consider it relevant or part of the genuine copy of the site, it will be seen as spamming. Your site will be removed, so it is best to just include genuine well-placed keywords that make sense as part of the website copy.
The key is to understand what your customers will be typing into the search engines and what will work for you. For this, you need a close understanding of who your customer is. What are their habits, their likes, and dislikes? What are they interested in looking at online? What do they use the web for? Do they access it through a mobile, or tablet or are they still computer-based surfers? Are they tech-savvy or a bit reluctant to give it a go? Are they comfortable with the web experience or are they someone who prefers some more tactile approaches?
A little bit of SEO linguistic profiling
These are all questions to ask, and they can drive the content and linguistic profile of your content. If you build a psychosocial linguistic profile of your ideal customers, and your target audience, you can tailor your content to meet their needs. With some social network listening tools and some data mining using forensic linguistic techniques (we will cover this in future posts), you can really unearth some gems in the digital marketing world that can give you a competitive advantage.
You see one of the areas that website marketers and digital marketers miss when looking at their client's needs is the neuro-linguistic profiling of their customers to drive content decisions. Linguistics, the study of the science of language/words, and especially combining the skills of forensic linguistics, cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, and behavioural psycholinguistics can open up a multitude of insights to your potential customers online. Think about it: people use written, and now more and more spoken, linguistics to find what they are looking for, converse with friends, and ask for directions or research topics.
Going further in delivering what the search engines and the customers want
Your website needs to be both search engine marketable and customer-friendly, so you need to bear both of these aspects in mind when writing your copy for your site. This is not always an easy task, and as SEO professionals and digital marketers we constantly weigh up the balance, in SEO terms, of what do the search engines want. And is it the same as what the customer wants?
For me, the key here is keeping the focus on the customer. If you get the content right for the customer, then you will, over time if not right away, score big with the likes of Google. Search engines are constantly looking to up their game to deliver a better content experience to their users. Ultimately this leads to revenue for them through paid adverts, but they also understand that it’s a fine balance between earning revenue and making sure what you deliver is an excellent experience.
For larger businesses, it’s key to get a technical SEO audit
Of course, this does not replace the need for a proper keyword audit and a technical SEO review of your website, comparing this with what the search engines will be looking for. You will also need to ensure the site structure is correct, hiring the services of an experienced SEO engineer may be necessary. They will look at everything from aligning your website with the SEO goals, looking at reducing duplicate content, defining the best URL structure, ensuring the pages and images are correctly indexed, to mention just a few but not forgetting mobile search friendliness and local, national, and international search friendliness.
This may seem somewhat overwhelming if you are a small family butcher or someone looking to run a not-for-profit and money is tight.
Considering this is a somewhat basic review of optimising your website. But if what I have mentioned in this section is above your budget, out of your comfort zone or your website provider gives you limited access to some of the areas that need optimising (get a new provider if this is the case, it’s not 2001 anymore) then you should not stress. Emphasis can be put on your site being 100% up to the SEO standards of the day.
In 2017, which is when I am typing these words into my word processor, there are so many ways to drive traffic to your website that getting bogged down with high-level website optimisation is something you can focus on when you really need to, not when time is limited, or you are just starting up. That said if you are starting up just take a few moments and the time to keep things clean.
There are plenty of website providers that provide in-built templates for their content management systems that include SEO tools. These will vary in their effectiveness so a bit of research on providers and their web templates and SEO friendliness scoring might be prudent before signing up with someone for the first time or moving from one provider to the next (some caution on this point will be posted in the future).
My days in SEO started with hard coding (hand-coding/writing code) for websites for SEO effectiveness, often by reverse engineering what was working for the competition and improving on it for my clients (a little bit of SEO hacking). These days I have very little time for that, so I use a simple solution/web content management system provider like this one from create.net. It is simple to use, and the hosting is nice and cheap, which as I am mainly working full time in sales and marketing management and on research projects and publishing content these days within the digital world, suits my needs just fine.
This is a live book writing project. Copyright is protected. It is a first rough draft so I would love to hear any feedback from readers. When the book is launched all that are signed up for this substack project will be sent a free Kindle copy of the book as a thank you for subscribing.
This project is part of the SleeplessDystopian.com writing projects.
Photo by Mikhail Nilov: