Search Engine Optimisation - How to get your website on Page 1 of the major Search Engines

These days most people look for goods and services on the internet.

 

They use search engines when they are looking to buy. They research before they buy, identify the best suppliers for their requirements and compare product specifications and prices.

 

The purpose of Search Engine Optimisation is to ensure that your goods and services appear in the search engine search results when people are looking for your goods and services.

 

Websites get most of their traffic from search engines. If your website can’t be found by the major search engines (Google being the most important one in the UK) then you are missing a trick to promote your business. These are qualified leads – people who are definitely looking to buy what you are offering. If your website doesn’t show up, then people may not find you and the business will go to a competitor, not you. You need your website to appear in the first 2 or 3 pages of the list of web pages which result from the search. If not, your website is unlikely to be noticed.

 

Search engines do not reveal their ranking methods and are constantly changing. They assess the text content of your site as seen by website visitors. They also have to combat tricks which unethical companies use to try to trick or mislead them.

 

When we optimise your site, there are several key factors to be taken into account:

 

Site content needs to be of good quality and of interest to visitor

Keep use of tables to a minimum

Avoid the use of frames

Avoid the use of Flash

Concentrate on text navigation

Ensure code is accurate

Ensure html tags are all correct

 

The content must be of use to site visitors. This is still the key factor and no amount of optimisation can replace providing good content.

You should make a list of key words and phrases you think people will use when looking for your goods and services and these should appear

several times in the text. The page must contain a minimum of 300 or so words, otherwise they may be ignored by the search engines.

Avoid the overuse of images, search engines don’t see them. Try to use text for headings and links, not images.

 

 

 

Links to your website from other good quality sites which are relevant to your business/website. These can be built up over time in a natural and organic way. Avoid buying links from ‘link farms’ as these can be regarded and ‘spamming’ by search engines and could result in your site being removed from their index.

 

Optimum results from Search Engine Optimisation can take time and effort. Don’t believe anyone who says they can get you to number one overnight – it just won’t happen!

 

An important factor is the amount of competition in your business sector for the search strings/words for which you want your site to appear. In those areas where competition is very strong, the best approach is to look for more specific search strings and avoid the very general ones which everyone wants. There is no guarantee in Search Engine Optimisation but you can always achieve success in certain areas.

 

Sustained Search Engine Optimisation takes time and should be looked at as a long term project. A one-off project will work, but generally only achieves temporary results and once you have achieved success, you need to continually tune it and build content and good quality links for it to be truly effective.