Search Engine Optimisation Services UK - Search Engine Optimization UK

How Can Your Site Achieve Good Search Engine Ranking?

The most heavily used search engine is Google. A large amount of analysis has been done on the way it operates, and what causes sites to do well in Google. So, what causes sites to appear high up in the list of returned results from a search?

1. Content

The most important thing is to have good content. Google likes sites which have relevant textual content - the more, the better.

2. Links

After content, the most important thing is to arrange for other sites to link to your site. In general, the more sites that link to yours, the better. However, Google counts the quality of the sites as well as the quantity. Important, high quality sites count for far more than low quality sites. Indeed, a link from a "suspect" site may have a negative effect. In addition, it is better to have one link from a related topic site than many from unrelated sites. The precise nature of those links is also crucial.

3. Site technical aspects

If your site uses framesets, Google will not be able to see most of your site, unless care has been taken to put optimisations in place in your pages specifically to address the problem. Your site's navigation technology should be such that search engines can find all of your site. Text within images, JavaScript and Flash are all invisible to search engines and cannot contribute to achieving a good position for your site. The same can apply to Active Server pages, product descriptions generated from a database and other dynamic pages.

Your pages should have an appropriate level of keyword density, using your chosen keywords. Particular meta-tag and attribute usage is very important, and deprecated usage can have a negative effect.

Getting Highly Targeted Visitors

We know both from research and our own experience that most search engine users don't look any further than the first page or two or the search engines' results. So if your site doesn't appear there, then search engine optimisation is certainly called for.

According to research by Pew/Internet and by GVU, close to 85% of web users use search engines to find web sites. On any given day on-line, more than half those using the Internet use search engines. And more than two-thirds of Internet users say they use search engines at least a couple of times per week. Some 87% of search engine users say they find what they want most of the time when they use search engines.

So, given this high usage and acceptance by consumers, search engine optimisation is a very cost effective way indeed of getting visitors to come to your site.

And these visitors are pre-qualified, highly-targeted visitors. They have sought you out.

Search Engine Optimisation Competition

The magazine .net commissioned an article about Search Engine Optimisation techniques, and a centrepiece of this was a competition between six SEO companies. Read about how we were listed first.

Our Search Engine Optimisation Services

We offer Search Engine Optimisation Services.

There are two options:

Search Engine Optimisation Consultancy Services, where we analyse your site and propose changes to it that you can implement
Search Engine Optimisation Development Services, where we redevelop your site ourselves

Our Search Engine Optimisation Services include:

Researching the keywords people use when searching for sites similar to yours
Determining which are the optimal keywords and which pages should be optimised towards which keywords
Proposing or making changes to text, meta-data, attributes and navigation types used on your website, to make it more likely to be found when searched for using the chosen keywords
Optimising framesets and other problem areas when needed
Restructuring and refining your existing content
Developing additional content-rich pages
Developing an effective link strategy campaign

If you'd like our help, or more information, please contact us.

Getting To the Top of the Search Engines' Listings

There is a lot of competition amongst businesses to get to the top of the search engines' free listings, which is why it is also worth considering paid listings. These can be surprisingly inexpensive - partly because the leading search engine companies charge you only when someone clicks on your ad.

A recent Piper Jaffray study^* found that search advertising is still the most cost-effective method of advertising (and at a fraction of the cost of direct mail, email, online banners or yellow pages).

Please see our website promotion page for more details

* U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, New Methods in Search Marketing: Contextual Advertising and Other Evolutions (Safa Rashtchy), June 2004.

Be Aware

There are some search engine optimisation companies who use very aggressive marketing and attempt to manipulate search engine results in ways which the search engine vendors do not approve of. Some of these practices are useless, some will actually reduce your ranking and others may result in your site being removed entirely from search engines' listings.

We do not do any of the following:

Guarantee a number one ranking within Google general search results. No-one can guarantee this. (See Search Engine Companies - Can You Trust Them? for more info).
Create deceptive or misleading content
Offer "free-for-all" links and link popularity schemes which can be counter-productive
Offer submission to thousands of search engines which are rarely used, and which can result in spam
Offer to re-submit your site to search engines every few days, weeks or months - which is unnecessary
Offer the ability for users to type keywords into the browser address bar
Promise to rank you highly in search engines but place you in the advertising section rather than in the general search results, without making the distinction clear
Create "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects
Put hidden links to other clients in doorway pages!
Get traffic from obscure search engines or spyware
Guarantee ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
Use hidden or "cloaked" text
Send you spam