On-Site Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

What is On-Site Search Engine Optimisation?

On-Site Search Engine Optimisation is the process increasing traffic to your website by adjusting the various methods within your own site.

External Links are a Drain on your sites SEO

Do you have too many links to external sources?  If so, you might be giving away your link juice.  Sounds like a funny thing to say, but if you link to an external website from your own the underlying message this gives to the search engines is that you are recommending the other website.  You may want to do this - perhaps it's your favourite customer or even your mother-in-law.  But be aware that too many links will drain your site of its value.  

There is an easy way around this (which Twitter for example uses to avoid losing any of their link juice).  By adding a <no follow> link to each of your external links, you tell the search engines not to go to the other site from yours and therefore - not to credit the other site.  This is how Twitter can have so many links to external sites while maintaining a Google PageRank of 9/10.

User Generated Content (UGC) improves your On-Site Search Engine Optimisation

While we're on the topic of Twitter, Twitter is a great example of user generated content improving the websites SEO.  The search engines pick up on whether the website has changed since the last time it visited.  Twitter changes ever second making it a huge data source for the search engines to go through, and categorise.

There are two main ways in which you can encourage user generated content (UGC).  You can create ways in which the site is used for interaction (as is the case with Facebook and Twitter and the other social networking sites).  Or you can integrate it into your business processes.  An easy example of this is creating new pages whenever a new product is added to your e-commerce store.  By linking the process of adding products to the goal of generating good SEO, you can achieve fresh content without any additional effort.

Proximity to the Domain and having a Keyword Rich Domain

The folder categorisation of 'beef' tells the search engines that there are multiple pages relating to 'beef' within it.  For each product, this might be:

• www.mydomain.com/beef/beef-fillet.html
• www.mydomain.com/beef/beef-steak.html
• www.mydomain.com/beef/beef-ribs.html

Check your domain structure and make sure it's set up to encourage users to find you through search.

Internal Links to improve your On-Site SEO

As well as encouraging other websites to link to you (see our section on off-site Search Engine Optimisation), you can also improve the Search Engine Optimisation on your website by creating internal links.  This may be through related products. For example, we developed a site for Harrogate Deli Weeton's and gave them the ability to link related products (see example product page below): 

• www.weetons.com/Online-Food-Shopping-Dairy-Cheese/UK-Blue-Cheese/Shepherds-Purse/Yorkshire-Blue-Cows/208/

This has already been noticed in the sales results with customers buying products which have been 'Recommended by Weeton's'.