In a recent edition of Vanessa Fox’s new webmaster radio show “Office Hours” she remarked on the fact that whenever you see lists of frequently asked questions about search engine optimisation, the answers often start with ‘it depends on’. This can be quite frustrating for anyone who wants a simple and specific answer, and there are simple and specific answers to be had. So below are seven commonly asked questions followed by their simple answers.

1. How long does it take for Google to index pages after they’ve been seo’d?
Answer: 1-6 weeks

2.What do you do if rankings drop 10 pages in the serps?
Answer:Nothing, just give it a few weeks to see if your ranking comes back, because it usually does.

3.To what extent is seo effective?
Answer:Seo can be very effective in getting and increasing traffic to your website if done by a knowledgable person, but not so effective when done by someone who lacks seo skills.

4. Should the title tag exactly match my page’s main headline?
Answer: Generally they should be different because they serve different puposes, however, if they are the same, it’s not a big seo deal.

5.Should urls be changed to contain keywords?
Answer:Doing this is a major structural change to your site, however, if you are redesigning your site or changing your CMS, then keywords in the url look good in the search engine results.

6. How many keyword phrases should I target?
Answer:You can target anywhere from 2-5 keyword phrases on any one page of your website; if you multiply that by the number of optimised pages that gives an estimate of the number of keyword phrases to target.

7.Should I put my blog in a sub-directory, sub-domain or its own domain?
Answer: It doesn’t really matter, but if it’s in a sub-domain there’s more chance it will show up in search results at the same time as your main domain, than if it’s in a sub-directory. More importantly, searchers are more likely to remember something if is mydomain.com/blog than the other way around. It doesn’t really matter in seo terms.