A Brief Introduction to the History of Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation, also known as SEO, is the effort in promoting a website on major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, etc. In reality, this exercise is primarily focused on optimising a site for certain keywords/key phrases so that when these are entered on a search engine window, the site appears at the top of an ensuing Search Engine Results Page (SERP). In my opinion, a site appearing at least on the first page following a query is a great result.

For many websites, success is measured in terms of targeted traffic they attract and entice. The greater the number of visitors you attract to your site, the greater the interaction there will be between your visitors and your site. Thus, if you are trying to sell something on your website, there is more likelihood of numerous these targeted visitors doing just that.

There are majorly two ways to attract traffic to your site. Either by paying for it, for instance if you participate in the Google AdWords program or not paying for it which is where Search Engine Optimisation comes into action. As a matter of fact, the effort to raise the rankings of a site by SEO means is also known as organic search engine promotion.

In the early days of Google, it was really easy to get a website indexed and then quickly ranked high. For one thing many Webmasters realized what made Google tick and went about cheating the system to get their sites ranked high and quickly. In general, they employed what is now referred to as Black-Hat SEO services. Amongst various other things, this form of optimisation involved obtaining plenty of backlinks to the site from external sites which were not necessarily relevant to the incoming website.

It also involved stuffing the site with keywords and plenty of them. Sometimes this exercise made the article quite difficult to read as it did not flow naturally. The keywords density target had to be met and so these keywords had to be placed somewhere in the article which in turn distorted its context and the narrative.

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Proactive Implementation of the Sitelink Policy by Google

Sitelinks extensions are a useful feature in Google AdWords that allows pay per click advertising specialists to include additional links to their standard text ad. This is a great way to promote different web pages of a site through a single ad.

According to the existing sitelink policy, each sitelink within the ad must lead to a unique landing page on the site. However, Google has reported an increase in the number of sitelinks leading to the same landing page. It’s a violation of the policy and this is why Google will soon begin proactive enforcement of the policy. So, in the coming months, the sitelinks that do not meet the policy standards will be restricted from showing in the results.

Using different sitelinks that lead to single landing page is a malpractice meant to promote the most important web page. This practice has benefited the pay per click advertising efforts of many advertisers but it violates the policy standards and leads to a decline in the quality of results shown on the search engine.

Advertisers who want to improve their PPC performance need to adhere to the policy and add 6-10 unique sitelinks to their campaigns. If you include lesser sitelinks, the possibility of your ad showing above your competitors would diminish. Inadequate number of sitelinks would also adversely affect your ad’s visibility level and click through rate (CTR).

As of now, Google will not take any action against the campaigns that use different sitelinks leading to same landing page because making the changes would need time, but advertisers should take this as a warning and start working on their sitelink strategy. The policy would be enforced on new sitelinks and the ones that are edited and need a review from Google.

To get best results out of your sitelinks extensions, writing great sitelink copy is crucial so that they inspire the users to click it and take a favourable action.

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5 Latest Tips on Writing Meta Description Tags to Increase Traffic

Quality has never been so emphasised up on in the website optimisation industry before as it is being done now. Whether it is about the content, the backlinks, H1 tags or the Meta descriptions, it is crucial to make them all useful and relevant for the human users, not just the search bots.

Earlier, Meta descriptions were written only from the point of search engine optimisation. All the targeted keywords were stuffed in to positively affect the rankings. However, since the time Google started taking measures on improving the quality of the search results, writing meaningful content, even in the Meta tags, has become important.

Presented below are 5 tips on writing effective Meta description tags to meet Google’s quality parameters –

1. It should make sense – More often than not, website optimisers stuff together all the targeted keywords without actually creating meaningful sentences. The purpose was to just fill the space with the targeted keywords. However, Google now gives greater preference to web pages that have meaningful Meta descriptions.

2. Keep it concise – The Meta descriptions show up in your Google search results as snippets. If you write long-stretched descriptions, it will appear to be incomplete in the results. Ideally, a Meta description should be restricted to 150-160 characters.

3. Include a call to action message – For users, who are looking for your business on Google, the Meta description is the first thing they see about your company/service. If you include an impactful call to action message, there are higher chances of click through rates.

4. Maintain uniqueness – Many Website optimisation use the same description for each web page. This practice leads to content duplicity and may cause a ranking penalty by Google. So, you must ensure that each web page has a unique Meta description that talks about what that particular page is all about.

5. Don’t stuff keywords – Again, the practice of keyword stuffing no longer helps your website optimisation efforts. It is great to utilise important keywords in the description in a natural manner, not just to fit them all for SEO benefit.

The next time you are updating the Meta descriptions and titles for your web pages, it would help if you integrate the above discussed measures in to your approach.

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