Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Posted At : October 21, 2008 6:05 PM
Related Categories: Online Marketing

Search engine optimisation is the process of making your website perform better in the search engines with the aim of achieving greater brand awareness, increased sales, newsletter sign ups or whatever the goal of your website may be.

The SEO process can be broken down into two areas called ‘on site and ‘off site’ optimisation and it’s a combination of these elements that will improve your visibility in the search engines.

On Site

The way in which your website pages are structured has a fundamental impact on their performance in the search engines. You may have heard the saying that ‘content is king’ and to some degree that is true but before the search engine spider has reached the content you need to describe the page to the search engines to help them interpret and categorise it correctly.

The page content also needs attention to ensure that it is relevant to the search terms that your visitors are looking for. Relevancy is a core underlying principle that is part of the process of making those pages relevant to the theme of your website, which goes toward establishing your site as a credible authority in your market place.

This process can either be used to improve performance of your existing website or, integrating these fundamental principles as part of the design will ensure that your site will be able to achieve its maximum potential.

Off Site

Once you have established a solid foundation for your websites seo capabilities, it is time to start promoting it. One of the most important indicators that search engines use to determine a website's value is the number of other websites that are linking to it and the quality, relevance and age of those links. Once again relevance plays an important factor in determining the quality of your website to the search engines and therefore where they should position it in their search results.

By identifying relevant websites, social networking sites and institutions as link partners the process of building natural, theme based links to your site can begin. From simple requests to for links to relevant content on your site to expertly written, sometimes controversial "link bait", and syndicated articles and press releases, this is a time consuming exercise that needs to be executed with care. Over the years, search engines have become wise to the attempts to manipulate their search algorithms and to ensure that all your search engine optimisation efforts are not penalised and your site buried in the lower pages of results, link building needs to be done in a controlled fashion.

A Word Of Caution

Don’t be fooled by seo companies offering guarantees. There are none when it comes to your site achieving great search engine positions that generate you free traffic. The more competitive your search terms, the harder it is. All search engines make their money through paid advertising - Pay Per Click (PPC) which are the small ads you see at the top and in the right hand column of the search results. This means that if a search engine decides to change its algorithm which has a negative impact for your site in the natural search results, then so be it - guaranteed first page exposure comes in the form of paid advertising. Ultimately the aim is to produce the best results possible based on what you search for but this is not always the case and there have been many occasions where sites that have ranked highly for many years have disappeared over night - so don’t be fooled by low cost guarantees.

How We Can Help

We are able to help in two ways.

1. We offer bespoke services designed to integrate with your offline activity to improve visibility for your most popular key phrases but also the less popular ones that can also generate significant visitor numbers to your site. Depending on your requirements this may include:

• SEO Audit/Report
• Keyword/Phrase Research
• Site Optimisation
• Content Generation
• Link Popularity Building
• Ranking/Visitor Reporting

2. We also offer a fixed price search engine optimisation service that allows businesses to explore this marketing channel, with the opportunity to see how improved visibility can lead to increased sales without a significant financial commitment.

We offer SEO and Web Design Services in Buckinghamshire, High Wycombe, Maidenhead, Marlow, Slough, Reading, Oxford, Windsor, Hemel Hempstead, Berkshire