(SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION)
There was a time when a website could tick just a few simple boxes – Beautiful Design, Great Functionality, Good Layout and a Perfect Message – a single advert in the Yellow Pages or a local newspaper would get you plenty of calls. These days there are so many ways to get your message heard that you need to be found online by the right people at the right time and the only way to do it is by search engine.
Google is not the only search engine on the web it is joined by the MSN Live system, Yahoo and AOL as well as a myriad of different smaller – tributary search engines. These all use different algorithms in order to work out whether your web page is relevant to what people are searching for. Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services and its algorithm of how to serve the results for each enquirey changes on a regular basis – fine tuning itself to deliver the most accurate and relevant results possible.
Search engine Optimisation is the art of tailoring the content and the code contained within your web page to be as ‘relevant’ to the people who you want to be found by as possible. The process is simple but requires the analysis of a huge amount of information:
- Your Competitors Data
- Copywriting
- Domain Names
- Hosting Locations
- Images
- Keyword Production & Density
- Descriptions
- Google Maps
- Webmaster Tools
- Google Analytics
This is all before the arduous task of listing your site with as many search directories as possible.
Each month your site needs checking to maintain position and ensure it’s focused towards the latest algorithms and any competitor changes.
On top of all that effective SEO needs a back-linking campaign to steadily build and grow in-bound links from external sites to yours. This involves writing articles and posting them into other sites (directories PR sites, Blog sites etc).
