Effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing
Why do I need Search Engine Optimisation?
Most people use search engines extensively to find what they are looking for. They are often using search engines when they are looking to buy, to:
- research before they buy
- find the best suppliers of services or products
- to compare product specifications and prices
So Search Engine Optimisation (or is it Optimization?) or Marketing is intended to place your services and products in front of potential buyers when they are actively looking for your products and services.
Search Engines are the main source of visitors for most web sites. If your web site can't be found in the major Search Engines (Google is the most important search engine in the UK) then you are missing out on an opportunity for attracting numerous visitors to your site. Visitors using a search engines are specifically looking for something, and if they have found your web site they are primed ready for your products or services. This is a great opportunity to promote your product or service.
If your web pages do not show up in the search results people may not find you. The business may then go to a competitor instead of you. As a website owner you will want your web page(s) to appear in the first 2 or possibly 3 pages of the list of relevant web pages. Any further down the list and your web site is unlikely to get noticed.
Search engines generally carry 2 sorts of results.
- Natural (or organic) listings - these are the main results they present and are based on the relevance of the words on your web page to the words being searched for. They are free and long term - this is what Search Engine Optimisation is focussed on.
- Paid for listings or pay per click - these are the sponsored links (usually first couple at the top of the main natural listings plus ads at the side). Everytime someone clicks on one of these the search engine makes a charge to the site being visited. These are adverts where the site owner has selected the keywords for which their advert should be displayed.
What is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of tuning your web page(s) to get the best possible "natural" results in the search engines. It is primarily about the words on your web pages and the way they are coded within the html. The concepts are actually very straight-forward and logical (although the exact methods the search engines use are complex, constantly changing and are not made public knowledge).
Basically a search tries to rank the relevance of web pages by examining the visible text (ie the text you can see in a browser) on the page. Any thing that may be regarded as an attempt to mislead the search engine (about what is actually on the page that you see) is actively combatted and is regarded as spamming. Beware of any Search Engine Optimisation techniques that do not involve focusing mainly on the visible text on your web pages. You may find your website penalised or worse - excluded from the search engine listings.
Why isn't Search Engine Optimisation just a normal part of Website Design?
Well it should be and it is with what appears to be a small number of good web designers but unfortunately more often than not it isn't. Many web designers do little or nothing to effectively optimise web sites for search engines - in fact they often hinder the search engines with the design techniques they use.
So is your website search engine friendly or is it actively hindering the search engines? Here are a few basic things to look out for:
- Is your website Flash based
- Is your website Frames based
- Has your website got lots of graphics but not very much text
In which case your website is probably not search engine friendly.
- Do you know which key words and phrases your web site is targeting
- Do your pages have lots of text (preferably over 250 words per page - ideally 500 words)
- Is your navigation straight-forward and text based
- Do your pages use <h1>, <h2> ... etc tags
In which case your website is probably search engine friendly.
If you want to know a little more - Beginners guide to Search Engine Optimisation
If you have a search engine friendly website it is likely to be a very straightforward task to search engine optimise your site. If your website is not search engine friendly this still does not necessarily mean that a complete re-design of your website will be required, it is often a case of removing the inhibiting factors and adjusting the text content.
An overriding consideration always is that search engine optimisation measures should not reduce the appeal of the website to visitors. This would be contrary to the fundamental purpose of the website.
How do search engines rank web pages?
Firstly, is your web page relevant - it is if it contains the key words being searched for - in text (and the search engine can find them).
Secondly, how relevant is your web page compared with all the other relevant web pages and therefore how high should it rank in the list.
Search Engines all use their own algorithms (the details of which they keep private). However in general terms it boils down to:
- Key word positioning (do the key words appear in important parts of the web page)
- Frequency (how often do the key words appear - within sensible limits, the more the better)
- Supporting content (does your page have a good amout of text supporting the key words - ideally there should be at least 250 words per page)
- Relevant good quality links to your web page (if other relevant good quality web pages are linking to yours it is considered to be more important)
Our Search Engine Optimisation Services
Our services can be on a once off basis if you prefer or a regular effort to improve the search engine performance of your website. Successful Search Engine Optimisation projects tend to be based on a long term effort to establish and build a good presence in the search engines.
To Optimise your website for the Search Engine we:
- Work with you to review the main themes of your website
- Establish suitable key words to target
- Help you review and refine or build your content to support your target key words
- Review and amend the design and the code behind your web pages to ensure that the common problems are removed or minimised (e.g. graphical navigation)
- Review the ranking of your web pages in the most important search engines for your target key words
- Look with you at the opportunities to build relevant and helpful links to your website
It is more straight-forward if we can have direct access to amend your web pages, however if you prefer we can guide your web designer.
In Addition:
We can also look at the usability of your website to see if there are improvements that can be made to increase the likelihood that visitors will stay with your website once they have found it.
We can review pay for placement schemes that may be useful to your marketing campaign if you wish to go down that path.
Search Engine Optimisation Services Costs:
It really depends on how much search engine optimisation is required: Search Engine Optimisation is one of those things that you can spend as much time as you have available on. We therefore approach these projects from the point of view of limiting the effort to match a budget. We would normally recommend a 6 month project - it usually takes several months for the search engine optimisation efforts to take effect and there is quite a lot of trial and error involved. However we can do a one off search engine optimisation project if that is your preference. Typically:
- Stage 1 is to sort out what keywords and phrases you want to target, bench mark current search engine performance, evaluate and adjust your site pages. This stage targets a small number of pages on your site and costs from £400 to £600 +vat.
- Stage 2 is a monthly review of performance and site adjustment - this will usually target other pages on your site as well as adjusting ones already worked on and may include adding new content to the site as well as adjustments to existing content. There would be a brief monthly progress report provided. Costs from £100 to £200 +vat per month
Guarantees:
We cannot provide any guarantee of a certain level of performance (no one can - unless they are talking about pay per click) - this depends on how good the competition is but we can show you how to get the full long term search engine potential from you web site.
What we will not do - Search Engine Spamming:
Some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies offer various techniques that claim to place your website at the top of the search engines by exploiting loopholes, tricking or cheating (collectively referred to as spamming) the search engines into artificially ranking your website high. Spamming the search engines can sometimes work in the short term but the search engines are wise to all the spamming techniques and are constantly refining their algorithms to beat the cheats. If your website is spamming the search engines it is likely that it will be penalised or even worse banned from the search engines at some point. We promise that we will not knowingly involve your website in any activities the search engines consider to be spamming.
Search Engine Spamming and other unethical SEO claims and techniques we avoid:
We cannot "guarantee top search engine positioning". (Nobody can - these guarantees usually are for keywords that there is little or no competition for).
We do not have a "special relationship" with the search engines. (Nobody does - this usually means that some form of pay for placement scheme is being used to increase visitors to your site - which can be done by anyone)
We do not "submit your website to hundreds or thousands of search engines" – there are only a handful of real search engines, the others are free directories (most of which won’t be relevant) or free for all links pages (which are at best no use and at worse damaging because the real search engines know what they are and penalise your website for being involved). To submit to hundreds or thousands of irrelevant search engines can only be done for a realistic price using an automated tool – the real search engines don’t accept automated submissions. We will manually submit your website to the main search engines where required and we can review relevant directories and manually submit your website to these.
We will not set up "virtual, doorway or duplicate pages" intended only for the search engines (cloaking). These pages are generally intended to be invisible to the normal visitor and generally do not work as there are no legitimate links to them.
We will not "stuff your web pages with lists of invisible key words" or hidden links.
We will not set up special linking pages on our own website or the website of another customer for the express purpose of sending extra traffic to your website and charge you for this artificial traffic.
Search engines are wise to all these techniques and your website is likely to be penalised or banned at some point if these techniques are used. We focus only on valid Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques to ensure your website attains long term sustainable high search engine rankings without risk.
Related information:
Content is Everything .... to your website visitor and to the search engines!
Beginners guide to Search Engine Optimisation - If you want to know a little more about the basic techniques of ethical search engine optimisation
Link Popularity and Link Building Suggestions - Some search engines use Link Popularity as a significant ranking tool so obtaining good quality relevant links to your website can give your site a boost in the search engines
Marketing Your Website - a brief overview of most aspects of website marketing activities and our services.
Search Engine Success - a separate website we have developed which gives more detailed guidance on ethical Search Engine Opimisation for anyone intending to do this themselves.
New customer site in progress - RNMSupplies - a new stationery and office supplies company to be launched shortly.