Search Engine Optimisation, SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of having your website optimised, so you can gain the maximum traffic (visitors to your website) through the search engines. Search engines read the 'text' content of your website and rank it's relevance to search terms input by users.
Although there are hundreds of search engines on the web, there are only three main ones with which you should be interested, these being MSN, Yahoo and Google. Only the search engine providers know the perfect formula to rank highly in their results. All details of the algorithm used are purposely kept out of the public domain. Our advice is to steer clear of SEO companies who claim they can get you top ten rankings within a month or two. Nobody in the world can guarantee such a thing. The algorithm is known to take more than 100 factors into account and is constantly being improved and changed.
SEO is not easy and it is certainly not a quick process, however it does work! New sites can expect to wait at least six months before they begin to be ranked favourably, although by following a few guidelines, having your site designed to set standards and regularly keeping your site maintained, you can expect to steadily progress through the rankings.
An important factor in SEO is backlinks, these are links placed on other websites which point to your website. As your website ages it will naturally pick up backlinks, however you can help to accelerate this process through correct SEO. Backlinks are an important factor in high ranking websites and a key part of SEO. If search engines see links on other sites pointing to your site, it is natural for them to see this as a vote of confidence for your site.
Sadly, because of the importance on these backlinks, many SEO companies have employed tactics, where they pay for or exchange links with numerous off-topic websites to bolster this particular part in their rankings. The search engines have become wise to this and now look far more for 'on-topic' links. On-topic links are links that point to your site that reside in the same industry or area of business. If a wedding car website links to a wedding cake website, this can be classed as 'on-topic', whereas if an engineering business pointed to a florist's website, that could be considered as 'off-topic'. Good quality 'on-topic' links are what you are after, it is better to have 15 very good links, than 500 poor ones.
We complete your website SEO as part of the build process, this is only half the SEO battle though. It is important that you (as a site owner) also play your part. Contacting other websites and exchanging links and also keeping the information on your website up to date and fresh. As part of building your website, we will discuss the various things you are advised to do in order to improve the rankings on your website.
Google (the biggest search engine) have a number of schemes to assist in moving your site through their rankings. We are happy to discuss, advise and help on these or any other SEO queries you may have.