Slightly Askew

Photo by slimmer jimmer

If you’ve arrived here looking for information about Aldburgh, the lovely seaside town in the equally lovely county of Suffolk, there’s good news and bad news.

The bad news is that you spelt Aldburgh wrong. (You need an e after the d – just like the alphabet.) And what you’ve stumbled upon here is an experiment to see if I can generate a bit of website traffic based on a typo.

But I guess if you’re here, the good news is that my experiment’s worked.

(By the way, if you’re still reading and really do need to find somewhere to stay in Aldburgh, why not head to The Brudenell? It’s an independent hotel owned by the lovely people at Thorpeness & Aldeburgh Hotels. Or if you’re only going for the day, don’t forget to buy some chips.)

Anyway. The reason for this little post is that I’ve been fiddling around with Google’s Keyword Tool today, and I discovered that “Aldburgh” is searched for 3,600 times a month. And “Aldburgh Suffolk” a further 390. That’s nearly 4,000 searchers who are ready to be welcomed to this here blog.

And if you are one of those 4,000, “welcome” says I.

Take a look around.

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(This is a search engine optimisation tip.) 

How many home pages do you have?

You probably think you’ve got one, and you’ve probably got four.

I used to have four:

http://slightlyaskew.co.uk
http://slightlyaskew.co.uk/index.php
http://www.slightlyaskew.co.uk
http://www.slightlyaskew.co.uk/index.php

And whatever URL you used, the same page would appear.

So why does it matter?

Well, it’s to help those wonderful search engines that you want to send free traffic your way. Google will count them as four separate pages because you could have four different pages that appear for those URLs (the fact that you haven’t matters not).

And having four separate pages isn’t good for backlinks.

If you’ve got 100 good backlinks, yet they’re split 25/25/25/25 across the four URLs, then search engines aren’t going to give your home page the respect it deserves.

To optimise your site, you need to permanently redirect the four URLs to one.

I’ve chosen the www version without the index.php bit.

In order to do that, you need to add the following code to your .htaccess file that sits in the root directory of your website.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^slightlyaskew\.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.slightlyaskew.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.slightlyaskew.co.uk/ [R=301,L]

Obviously, you need to change the slightlyaskew.co.uk bits (and the index.php bit if you’re using index.html site). 

This is called a 301 redirect. Google prefers 301 redirects if you’re permanently redirecting the search engine spiders.

Don’t ask me to explain any the technical side to this because I don’t understand it. Try Matt Cutts: he works for Google and uses words like canonical. I’m just a yokel from Ipswich.

But, for this Ipswich yokel, the code works. And if it helps improve your website’s visibility, I reckon it’s five minutes of search engine optimisation worth doing.

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If yesterday’s post about search engine optimisation (SEO) was like throwing you in the deep end, then I hope you’ve learned to swim.

Only because SEO is a great way to spend less money on Google AdWords and generate more profit per sale.

And you don’t need to be a genius to get the basics right.

The even better news is that Google are on your side; they want you to rank higher - they really do.

No, I’m not talking shit; let me explain…

Google’s goal is to return the most relevant searches to a user’s query.  That’s why they’ve grown as big as they have - their search engine brought back more relevant results more often.

For instance: I’m a freelance(ish) copywriter based in Ipswich who’s good with websites and marketing-savvy.  If somebody is looking for a copywriting marketer based in the county town of Suffolk - I’m your man.

So, obviously, I want people to find me for terms such as “Copywriting Marketer Ipswich”.  And as of today, this website is number one for that search term.

It’s not me that’s clever - it’s the people at Google.  They’ll find you and work out how relevant you are unless you deliberately tell them not to.

But if you do want to be found, what’s wrong with giving them a few tell-tale signs?

Imagine you were lost.  You know there’s a helicopter looking for you, equipped with one of those fancy heat cameras that they use to track criminals.  So no matter where you are, it should be able to find you.  Having said that, rather than sit in the undergrowth, you’d probably find a clearing, write SOS with anything you can cobble together, and start a fucking big fire.

So if you’re business is lost amongst all the others, SEO could be your SOS.

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You’ve probably heard of search engine optimisation (SEO): it’s the art (or otherwise) of getting your site to rank highly in search engines.

The good news is that it’s not actually that difficult.  And, on the other hand, er… it is.

It all depends on what keywords you want your site to rank highly for.

Keywords are the words or phrases that a user types into Google (other reputable search engines are available, but I don’t use them).

The keywords you want to rank for will for will affect how easy it will be to rank highly.

If you want to rank highly for “fish restaurant” then you’re going to struggle.  Much easier is to include the town or county that your restaurant is in.  The search term “fish restaurant Ipswich” will be easier to rank for as there’s less competition.

It’s a lot more relevant too - someone isn’t going to drive from Newcastle just for the halibut.  (If they are, you needn’t worry about search engine optimisation - go open a few more restaurants).

But how do you know people search for the term “fish restaurant” and not “seafood restaurant”.  The answer, gentle readers, is Google trends.  Ideally though, you’d want to rank highly for both terms.

This where an SEO copywriter should do their bit.  An SEO copywriter, as you’ve probably guessed, does their copywriting with search engine optimisation in mind.

The first, and most important, thing to do is to look at the HTML title tag.

The title tag is what you see at the very top of your browser.  The words in the title tag are the words that appear in blue on Google’s search results pages.

A nifty title tag will include your restaurant’s name, what type of food it serves, and where it is.  Aim for 65 characters or less.  Something like:

The Captain’s Table | Fish & Seafood Restaurant, Ipswich, Suffolk

That’s exactly 65 characters long and includes all your keywords.  And more to the point, it’s still clear and easy to read.

That’s all for today’s lesson.  More on SEO in the coming days, weeks, and months.

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