Search engine optimisation is the process of making sure web content is organised and structured in a way that can easily be understood by search engines and other aggregators of information on the Internet so that they can determine the relevancy of your content against what a user is looking for. Good search engines take what the user types in (known as a keyword, even if there are several words) and displaying high-quality results which it thinks are most likely to satisfy the user.
The better organised this information is – and the better indication you can give to search engines that your content is quality and / or authoritative – the higher-ranked you are likely to be when potential customers are searching for information about the types of accommodation and services you offer.
Given its market dominance, by search engines we usually mean ‘Google’, and although there are other similar products available (such as Bing, or Duck Duck Go), the reality is that many of these search engines are influenced by what Google is doing and align their products accordingly. Therefore if you concentrate on optimising content for Google, the chances are you will perform better with other search engines too.
The ‘secret ingredient’ behind how Google determines rankings of content – generally known as their algorithm – is often seen as mysterious and well hidden. And whilst clearly the inner-workings of how the algorithm are not publicly known (Google describes over 200 signals of uses to interpret content), a lot of the methodology is well known and is simply about being methodical in how you produce and structure content. After all, it is in Google’s interest to reward quality and relevant content so that their users quickly find what they are looking for.
Any time you type in a keyword, as Google we have gone out and crawled and stored copies of billions of [websites’] pages in our index. And we take the keyword and match it against their pages and rank them based on over 200 signals — things like relevance, freshness, popularity, how other people are using it. And based on that, at any given time, we try to rank and find the best search results for that query. And then we evaluate them with external raters, and they evaluate it to objective guidelines. And that’s how we make sure the process is working.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google (explaining to US Congress why Googling ‘idiot’ turns up pictures of Donald Trump)
When considering SEO in your content, we suggest understanding two key areas:
- Understanding ‘authority’
- Properly structuring content
(Google has a document which presents these in a more detailed way here).
There are many other areas that web designers concentrate on, but we have chosen these two because:
- Understanding ‘authority’ shows how you have an edge on your competitors – and where it might be lost
- Keyword idea and keyword generation is less relevant to our industry – we know what students are typing to find us and our authority gives us the edge to fight on these keywords
- Properly structuring content is where most ground is commonly lost in SEO competition
This is where Google attempts to determine which pages are authoritative on the topic the user is searching for.
For example, if a user searches for ‘stamford university’, it’s these authoritative signals which means the University of Stamford’s website is more likely to be shown than, say, Stamford Cabs, who have tried to skew their SEO to university students in Stamford.
When people first became attune to SEO they quickly realised one of the major signals for this was ‘back-links’: how many other sites were linking to your site. Agencies specialised on getting your site linked on other sites: the more authoritative that site was the more valuable the link. These days the signals are far more complex than that and Google uses a whole host of information to determine how ‘authoritative’ it considers your site to be.
The good news for our industry is that your content is likely to be considered amongst some of the most authoritative on the Internet. For example, consider three pieces of content:
- University of Stamford (stamford.ac.uk)
- University of Stamford Accommodation – your product (stamford.ac.uk/accommodation)
- Sigma Halls – a 3rd party accommodation provider
If a user types in the keyword “University of Stamford”, from an ‘authoritative viewpoint’, content #1 is likely to feature 1st of any other keyword because Google is likely to understand that stamford.ac.uk is significantly the most authoritative content relating to that keyword. Content #2 and content #3 may eventually feature, but they are not particularly relevant to the keyword.
What happens if the keyword is “University of Stamford Student Accommodation”? In this case content #2 and #3 are likely to be the most relevant, but #2 is likely to have the edge in terms of the authority signals. #3 could still fight back with optimisations in other areas.
But what about “Stamford student accommodation” as a keyword? In this case #2 is likely to lose a fair amount of its edge in authority and this is now a fight with content #3 based on other SEO signals and efficiency. Also, it’s probably fair to say that content #3 is more relevant because the user is possibly searching for student accommodation in Stamford more broadly; and not the University of Stamford official accommodation.
Of course the above isn’t a science. It’s a generalisation (that you can test yourself – type a few real examples into Google) to help you think more about how we should approach SEO. Remember, in terms of authority:
- Universities (and their associated domains) bring a high level of credibility with them
- This helps us particularly when relevant keywords are paired with your institution’s name (e.g. “University of Stamford accommodation”, “University of Stamford rooms”). But beware – third parties can still jostle for good positions by optimising other SEO signals
- There is more of a fight where generic keywords are used (“Stamford student accommodation”, “Stamford student rooms”) where authority and relevance is diminished and optimisation of other SEO signals will come into play
Structuring content
Structuring content is more technical, and can broadly be considered as:
- Writing content in a way that gives clear indicators of what it’s about (for example by repeating keywords relating to that product or service)
- Structuring code clearly so that search engines can understand it
- Having a clear website structure (through consistent navigation and use of technical features such as a sitemap) so that search engines understand how content is presented
- Use of web standards such as Schema to ensure that content can be understood and displayed dynamically by search engines
- Being consistent about how data is presented and structured across different services (such as maps platforms, review aggregators etc) so that it is properly linked by search engines
- Making sure sites are responsive, optimised and perform well