SEM consists of all the elements that are required to successfully promote a website; with the objective being to improve a website’s ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN and other major search engines. These elements may be classified as:

1)On-page optimisation (all the techniques involved in manipulating page content).
2)Off-page optimisation (all the techniques involved in website promotion).

A good way to think of it is: on-page optimisation is used to promote your product, service or information. Whereas off-page optimisation is used to promote your website.

On Page Optimisation.
Site Readiness – W3C Compliance:

Search engine robots do not like broken HTML code. Your rankings will suffer if your pages do not conform to World Wide Web (W3C) standards. A free online HTML validation service is available at: http://validator.w3.org/.
Search engines like Google now check CSS code, this must be validated also. A tool for this is available at: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/.

Site Readiness – Broken Links:

It should be obvious, but is often overlooked, that broken links are a problem in terms of search engine optimisation. Clearly, if the search engine robot cannot finish spidering your site, due to broken links, then some pages will not be indexed. A tool for checking broken links can be found at: http://validator.w3.org/checklink.

Site Readiness – Keyword Research:

Analyzing your niche market, or business sector, allows you to create an appropriate set of targeted keywords (the most obvious ones are not necessarily the best). A free keyword tool can be downloaded from: http://www.goodkeywords.com/.

Page optimisation – Copywriting

Once you have decided on the appropriate keywords/key phrases for each page, you need to work these keywords into the visible text on each page to be optimised. Remember that you are writing for users, not search engines, and the text must look natural.

Page optimisation – HTML Tag Optimisation

All the appropriate HTML tags on each page should be optimised for best effect. These include:
1)Title tag.
2)Meta keyword tag.
3)Meta description tag.
4)Header tags.
Also, don’t forget the image alt tags. And very importantly the link text in your anchor tags.
Page optimisation – Build content.
Keep adding new content to your website. If necessary publish articles and RSS feeds. Google loves new content.

Off Page Optimisation
Once you have finished the on-page optimisation, your attention needs to be focused on off-page optimisation. The essential components of off-page optimisation are:
1)Link building – begin a reciprocal and one way linking strategy.
2)Directory listings – get listed in human edited directories like Dmoz.
3)Article writing – a superb way to generate one way links.
4)Blog contributions – yet another opportunity for one way links.
5)Press releases – announce your presence to the world. More one way links.

Conclusion
All of the above are essential to a successful site promotion campaign. If you wish to improve your Google ranking (the other search engines will follow), do not neglect one area in favour of another. Do it correctly. Do it all. Then watch your rankings soar.

How do we know Google is updating its algorithm?

Most algorithm updates, whether on Google, Yahoo!, MSN or any other search engine, are characterised by sudden, drastic and often frequent changes on the search results pages for any search query. During the Jagger update, the folks at Google were kind enough to warn us a few days into the update that we were witnessing an update!

What has happened as a result of the Google Jagger update?

Underneath the superficial changes in search results, the Jagger update has had a serious effect on the way companies use search engine optimization to influence ranks. Numerous search engine optimisation experts have theorized on these effects. The most commonly agreed upon conclusions are:
Search engine optimisation has become more difficult than ever!
Older sites are given more recognition
Authority sites (e.g. BBC, NHS) are given more recognition
Government and Educational institutions are considered more important
Links from authority sites, government and educational institutions count
Older, longer-term inbound links are given more importance
Outbound links to authority sites are considered good
Relevance of links is very important
Sites with more pages containing useful information rank better
Up-to-date content is valued more

How does Google now value reciprocal links?

There are two aspects to consider for reciprocal links. First, Google considers artificial link building with the aim of influencing rank to be a form of spam, and so if it detects unnatural linking patterns, such as links obtained from link farms or link exchanges between irrelevant sites, it will penalize both the sites for this. Second, inbound links are increasingly weighed in importance according to the relevance of the page and the site where the link originates from to the page it is linking to. So, a link from a gambling site to a site about corrective surgery will be considered almost useless. The only type of reciprocal link building that is encouraged is between related companies in an industry e.g. between theatres and ticket agents or between two ticket agents

How do age of site and age of links influence ranking?

Google does not want spam domains to rank high on a results page, make a quick buck out of their top position and then disappear. As a result it imposes ageing delays on domains and now even on links. Sites which have been around for a while will rank higher. What this means from a search engine optimisation point of view is that it will take longer to see results of direct optimisation and it will also take longer to see the results of any link development work. Search engine optimisation work on new sites can take as much as 9 months to start yielding results for competitive keyphrases.

Relevance… of everything!

Google’s success was based on the relevance of the web sites it found for any user query. Therefore it should come as no surprise that their current algorithm goes a few steps further in rewarding relevance … of everything – of inbound and outbound links to and from a site, titles and headings to actual page content, page content to the rest of the site and so on.

Recovering from Jagger

If your site has been affected, go through the list of features of the Jagger update, and check if your site might have been struck due to any one of those changes in the search engine ranking algorithm. Re-optimise your site for the search engines by removing any offending content and links and immerse yourself in obtaining more relevant inbound links.
If you need any further help or guidance please contact us.
Other articles to read:
Google Analytics for SEM
Link development & Spam mass