Search Engine Optimisation

Professional website analysis and Search Engine Optimisation will result in your site performing well in search engine rankings and will increase traffic to your website resulting in more sales.

When we design a website, we do not just build you something that looks pretty and lists your products or services. Our sites are designed and coded to perform well in all areas. Our sites:

are Accessible to all categories of users.
are Accessible to search engine robots, crawlers and spiders.
Contain relevant content with good reference to your specified keywords and phrases.

How your site gets listed in search engines

In order to found on a search engine your site first has to be submitted (some are free and some require you to pay for inclusion (PFI)) to the engine and then "crawled" by it. The more accessible your website HTML code is, the more successfully it will be indexed.

Crawling is the process by which your website content is analysed by the engine, the result of this analysis determines how people will find your website. Once your site has been crawled it will become listed on the engines, you then need to consider how well your site is "ranked" compared to your competitors. Ideally you want your site to be listed on the first page based upon a search on your "keywords".

It is important to consider how people will find you; for example what words will they type into a search engine when trying to locate your products or services? These words will become your keywords around which the content of your site will be optimised. In addition to the basic listings you may wish to consider purchasing a number of clicks or buying keywords on search engines. This will mean that your site will be highlighted in the results when someone has performed a search based on the keywords specified. If you require your site to be listed quickly we can design a Pay For Inclusion program for you. This will, if required, also include submission to relevant directories.

Directories

Of course search engines are only part of the story of how to get found online. A major source of potential traffic for your website will come from being listed in website directories that are relevant to your product, service or location. A directory is often the first place that someone will look when attempting to source a product or service, when they do this you need to be certain that they can find you!

Like search engines many directories allow you to submit your site to predefined categories free of charge, it is however also common for a small fee to be requested for your site to be added. It is often worth paying this fee, especially if you have identified a particular directory as being a key potential source of traffic.

Ongoing monitoring

The initial listings on the search engines and web directories is only the first step in being successfully found online. It is important to monitor the performance of your site. You can do this by analysing your "website logs". This is a collection of statistics about the number of hits your website has been receiving, more importantly the number of unique visitors, and where these hits have been coming from. Once you know where the hits on your site are originating you can decide whether to tweak your content and keywords. Or even evaluate whether it is worth paying to be listed in certain directories based on the amount of hits on your site that have originated from each directory.

Accessibility

How well your site will be crawled by search engine robots and spiders is hugely dependant upon how accessible the content of your website is. A search engine can easily get lost in complicated page structure and would therefore be unable to reach part of your site. It is vital that this is fully considered during the development of your site. We can also provide recommendations on how to improve the accessibility of your site and perform the changes if required. To learn more read our usability and accessibility section.

Offline Advertising

Of course there is no point in investing in a website if no one knows that it is there. In many cases the best way to get people to look at your site is to include the URL (website address) on all your advertising, yellow pages adverts, business cards, posters, leaflets and letter heads, even in the footer of your email messages. Even in the online world traditional offline advertising can be the most effective. However when your website is operational it is essential to consider an online advertising strategy.