Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

How Does Google Rank Pages

Beginners Guide to SEO

SEO Scams to Avoid

SEO and Internet Marketing - is that enough?

Other Web Site Services

Web Site Design Pages

Disability Accessibility

Hosting

Domains

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Services

Rule 1 - Write good quality content aimed at people

My aim in search engine optimisation is: to create well written, content rich, people friendly websites that also ranks highly in the search engines.

From the started I thought I should make this clear so that we do not loose focus.

Websites are for people, they should always be written to be clear, informative and appealing to people.

The aim of the search engines is to help people find good quality relevant websites. Relevant is based on the search engine's interpretation of the text content on the website.

It is pointless having a website that ranks highly in the search engines but turns people away.

So I have written an article that might help you think about the content you could write for your website and another on why SEO and Internet Marketing are not enough on their own.

Designing a new website to be search engine friendly

Unlike most web designers I design web sites to be search engine friendly from the start. I treat search engine optimisation as an integral part of web design.

If search engine performance is the key requirement I may suggest that we approach the design of your web site more from a search engine optimisation perspective. So we might experiment for a month or so with some simple web pages (mostly text with no real design) to see what might happen in the search engines.

To do this I will need you to prepare in advance the text that might go on your website - As a minimum I might suggest 5 pages of 250+ words for each - 10 pages of 500 words each would be even better.

This approach helps you to make decisions about website design and content in advance and your approach to search engine marketing (eg do you consider pay per click sponsored links in the short or long term?). It is quite likely to change the way you think about the text content of your website and help you focus on what is more important. It may also save you being disappointed with a beautifully designed website that does not come up to your expectations in the search engine rankings.

Review Search Engine Performance of existing websites:

I can review an existing website to see if I can make suggestions that should improvements search engine rankings.

It is quite surprising to most people to find that their website has not been designed to work effectively in search engines - in most cases quite the opposite is true.

I have written a beginners guide to search engine optimisation for people who are interested in knowing more.

So often the ideal approach is to redesign the website with search engines in mind. However I do try to avoid going to such extreme levels except as a last resort and try to make the best of what is already there.

• I will normally ask you for the keywords and phrases that you want to target in the search engines.
• Then I will do a review of the key pages of your website looking both at how they appear in a browser and looking at the code behind the page.
• I will then provide you with a list of suggestions for improving the search engine performance of your website.
• Then we can plan a way forward. Search engine optimisation is one of those jobs you can spend all your time on so I usually limit the work to suit your budget. Typically there is likely to be a significant initial effort covering several days to address the main problems preventing good search engine rankings. Then this may be followed by smaller regular effort (perhaps 0.5 or 1 day a month) for 6 months. This regular effort usually involves a review of search engine performance plus additional search engine optimisation measures.

If you have an existing web designer you would prefer to continue to work with I can do that. Alternatively I can take-over the role of web designer and do the search engine optimisation as well.

There are usually 2 main considerations in seo:

1. The words on your web pages as they appear in the browser. Most search engine optimisation revolves around redrafting (and often - considerably adding to) this text. I would prefer you get heavily involved in this but I can do it all myself if you prefer. It will cost you more as this can be very time consuming and I will need some guidance.
2. The structure and format of the coding behind the web page. Mostly this needs to be simplified and suitable standards applied.

New or Existing websites - Please note: SEO limitations

Top search engine ranking cannot ever be guaranteed by anyone - give anyone who offers such guarantees a very wide berth.

I only use ethical search engine optimisation techniques - I do not use here today gone tomorrow spamming techniques that put your website at risk of being banned by the search engines.

It is very difficult to even guess in advance how well a website can do in the search engines. Sometimes you can get a site to the top first go (pretty unusual but it does happen) however it is not until you try that you start to get an idea of what may be possible. In most cases it takes trial and error, you get the basics right so the website is search engine friendly, then you try various measures to build on and increase the websites ranking.

In some cases it may take 6 months of regular effort to get good rankings and in other cases it may not be possible. It all depends on the competition and in the case of Google what is on the web page is only part of their ranking methodology - they also highly value links in from other sites they already rank highly. Getting such links is not feasible for many new websites. So many websites opt for pay per click or sponsored links - they pay through the nose continuously but it is no effort and it is instant. The advantage with good natural search engine listing performance is that it is long term although it may take 6 months effort to achieve.