Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the initial and ongoing process of refining your website so it achieves a higher ranking in the search engines, thus increasing the volume of visitors. When conducting SEO on a website we look a numerous factors that effect where it appears in the search results. By using tried-and-tested SEO techniques we aim to fine tune your website to achieve the best possible search engine ranking.
As we all know, very few people search beyond the first page of any search results so unless you're on the first page, you're not likely to receive many visitors to your website. Being on the first page of Google, Yahoo, Bing and the other major search engines is like having your business located in the busiest High Street in the country. However, competition amongst website owners is fierce for those coveted top positions so having a good SEO campaign is crucial.
The first (and possibly most important) part of any SEO campaign is to identify the search phrases (keywords) that people will use to find your website. You can see from the image above that a search for an Accountant in Guildford returns 118,000 results...pretty competitive. However, if we change the keyword slightly to 'Fixed-fee Accountants in Guildford', the volume of competition plummets significantly.
Whilst it would be significantly easier to achieve a first page ranking with the term 'Fixed Fee Accountants in Guildford', we will also analyse search volumes for that specific keyphrase. It's no good being top of the search engines for a keyphrase that nobody is searching for. The art of good SEO is to identify keywords that have a decent search volume but the least amount of competing pages.
Once we have identified suitable keywords for your website we analyse how your website is viewed by search engines. The above image shows the three most important elements of any web page. As you can see with this search for 'Accountants in Guildford', the search engine identifies the keywords in the page title, description and the URL (domain name) and displays them in bold. In this instance, the searched keyphrase is included in all three elements so this website would be off to a good start with SEO.
With some less-competitive keywords it is possible to get a website onto the first page of search engines with the above techniques alone. However, there are many other elements that effect that way a search engine ranks your website and the techniques above will probably not be enough in the long term to keep your website on page one.
As part of an ongoing SEO campaign, we employ numerous other techniques to supplement the keyword and 'on-page' optimisation. The most important of these techniques includes creating quality back-links to your website. A back-link is a link from another website to yours which includes your keyword, for example Small Business Website Design. If you hover over this link you will see in the bottom corner of your screen that it is a link to this website. Search engines love good quality, relevant back-links and the more you have, the greater importance attached to your website.
Because every business is different and will have very specific SEO needs, we will discuss your precise requirements during our free intital discussion. Equally, SEO campaign pricing does vary dramatically and cannot be confirmed until proper campaign analysis has been undertaken.
What next? Why not call us on 0845 307 6177 or email us to discover how we can help?
