SEO Advice
Trying to con or manipulate the search engines means trouble from the very beginning, so don’t do it – put your efforts instead into understanding how they work and what they want to promote to their customers. There are ways and means to manipulate search engines for sure, but our advice is simply – construct your website in a way that is attractive to them and you won’t go far wrong. If your targeted search engine says it’s going to promote websites that show fresh content above other websites … start writing. We don’t mean start writing ‘key word rich’ dribble either, write content that is unique, opinionated if you like – but write content that others may find a good read. You may have come across the term ‘content is king’ and in terms of Search Engine Optimisation – it’s true, there is no better way of promoting your website.
Of course, there is a lot more to optimising your website than inserting a new article every now and again, but it’s a good place to start. The way your page is constructed is equally important as is the way the actual website is linked together and interacts with the outside world. Where you place your text and contextual emphasis has an effect, the ratio of text and images also has an effect as does page loading speeds – there really is a lot to consider when trying to work out the perfect solution. We suggest, start with the basics and do them well. We would recommend then to optimise each page individually so the page stands strong on its own - look at relevancy, what is the page about? How does this link with what the overall website is about and the message it is trying to put across. There are lots of methods and ‘tricks of the trade’ that some companies will employ in order to promote your website – and some of them have nothing to do with optimising your website either, so be very careful on who you choose when its time to commence battle with the search engines.
If you ask some people about SEO they’ll smile, give you a knowing wink and mention the phrase ‘trade secrets’ – trying to propagate that air of mystery and wrap the subject up in a bubble of intrigue. There is no big secret to getting your website ranked highly in the search engines despite what some would have you think – most of it is common sense mixed with a bit of subject knowledge that you can readily obtain with a bit of research. Here are the 8 steps that we undertake for our clients as part of our service … and given a bit of time to work will provide the results. We are not suggesting that following these steps will get your website promoted overnight to a number one position – what we are saying is that by following these steps, you will be following proven ‘best practice’ methodology and the results you seek will be forthcoming reflecting on how well and how complete the steps have been accomplished.