Search Engine
Optimisation
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Squiders will always design your
website in a search engine
optimised way and always
included in the price. But what
is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search Engine Optimisation can
be considered in two parts;
On-site Optimisation and
Off-site Optimisation.
On-site SEO is a standard
of web design that allows search
engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing
etc.) to read the contents of
your website and therefore
display your site to visitors
searching on something related
to your products or services.
Off-site SEO involves
creating relevant links from
other websites to encourage
browsers to come and have a look
at your site ,this has an added
effect of helping to raise your
website's ranking. |
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If you were running a company
that sold pet food then any of
the following searches would be
relevant to you (to name but a
few!) |
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Dog Food |
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Cat Food |
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Pet Health |
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Pet Food |
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Animal Nutrition |
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Pet Food
Suppliers |
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In order for the search engines
to know that your company’s
website is relevant you must
ensure these terms appear in the
text of your website as well as
in the metatags and image tags
(more on these two in a bit) |
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To carry on our pet food
example, it is worth noting the
importance placed on individual
pages of your website. Within
our hypothetical Pet Food
website we might have separate
pages for cat food and dog foods
the text, image tags and
metatags will vary between the
pages to best describe the
content of said pages. When a
visitor to one of the search
engines searches for “dog food”
the results will display your
dog food page and not
necessarily your home page, this
helps you expand the number of
different keywords you can
associate with your website as a
whole. |
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In days gone by, search engines
primarily read a series of
keywords that web designers
embedded into the code of the
websites they designed, these
metatags are hidden from public
viewing.
This had obvious drawbacks as
search results could be
extremely unreliable. For
example, a company could add
“pet food” as a metatag but not
have anything to do with pets
which became frustrating for
visitors trying to find what
they wanted.
The more modern programs that
search the internet on behalf of
the search engines (bots or web
bots) have become much more
sophisticated and the meta tag
data has become irrelevant.
Google has once and for all
confirmed that the tags have no
influence in their search
results, in September 2009 a
post on their webmasters blog
read :
"Our web search (the
well-known search at Google.com
that hundreds of millions of
people use each day) disregards
keyword metatags completely.
They simply don’t have any
effect in our search ranking at
present"
This makes the wording of your
copy of paramount importance.
This is an area where I can
offer help and advice, tailored
to each individual. Be
wary of designers and SEO
"experts" that talk about meta
tags... they are very much
behind the times! |
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The programs that trawl and
index the internet can not (as
yet!) tell what an image or
picture is. As a designer it is
my job to write a description of
the image into the code. This is
another important way of getting
more keywords into your website. |
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Now we delve into the world of
off-site SEO.
Whilst it is true that search
engines look at how many
websites link to you, these must
be relevant links from relevant
websites. If you artificially
promote your website through
link farms, link exchanges etc.
you run the risk of being
penalised and even black listed
by the search engines.
The best links are often from
Trade Associations that you are
a member of or on manufacturers
websites that you are suppliers
for, this will vary from company
to company so the advice I will
offer is tailored to your
company‘s needs.
There is also great merit in
registering your website on
places such as “Google Local
Business”, “Yell.com” and
“FreeIndex” (to name but a few)
as visitors to search engines
often want to find business in
their local area. |
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The short answer is “maybe” and
don’t expect it over night. To
climb up the ranking on all the
search engines can take time and
effort and lots of factors are
involved such as the frequency
in which you add new content to
your website.
Again using "Dog Food", if you
were to write articles and add
news stories to your website on
a regular basis you both attract
repeat visits and grow your
website meaning more keywords
are seen by the search engine
programs the next time they
swing past.
A good example of this is the
article you a re reading now. It
hopefully helps you, the reader,
to understand the jargon heavy
world of SEO. It will also be
indexed by the search engines so
visitors querying terms like
“what are metatags?” will
stumble upon this article and
maybe then decide to give us a
call on 01622 205130 to discuss
their website needs!
Every business is different and
we can work together to come up
with a strategy that will work
for you. |
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Honesty, price and hopefully you
can see we know what we're talking
about!
You can view our
price guide by clicking here
and remember, all initial
on-site SEO
work is included in the price,
have a look on the net and you
will find people adding
thousands of pounds on to quotes
for this, all with big claims…
don’t be fooled!
We also monitor each of our
clients’ websites to see how
their visitors are finding them
and what search terms are being
used. For more details on the
monitoring side,
click here. |
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Below are just a few recent
examples of success we have had. Any position in the top 10
means it is on the first page of
results, statistically the most
important by far! |
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Search Term |
Engine |
Pos. |
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| Bear/Zest Email |
email broadcast
company |
Google |
1 |
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| Bear/Zest Email |
email broadcasting |
Yahoo |
4 |
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| Arrow Plastics |
plastic extrusions |
Yahoo |
10 |
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| Arrow Plastics |
press forming
plastics |
Google |
1 |
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| Luxury Villas
Antigua |
villas antigua |
Yahoo |
4 |
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| Luxury Villas
Antigua |
eating out in
antigua |
Google |
4 |
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| Atticus Search |
catastrophe
aggregate management |
Gooogle |
5 |
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| H2 Pharma |
pharmaceutical
manufacturing
company |
Bing |
3 |
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| H2 Pharma |
formulation cmc |
Google |
7 |
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| AQT Training |
training in well
established
organisations |
Yahoo |
3 |
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| Squiders |
web design maidstone |
Google |
2 |
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| Intuition Global |
trimetrix uk |
Google |
8 |
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| Violet Weddings |
wedding planner kent |
Google |
8 |
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It can be a daunting task
setting up a new site or
overhauling an existing one and
expert advice and opinion can
ease the burden. We are a small
(but talented!) business and
therefore every client is
valuable to us and we like to
think we can offer that little
bit extra advice and help. We
don’t charge for enquiries so
please get in touch!
Thanks for reading.
Kris Jeary
Squiders Web Design
21/08/2009 |
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