Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
What is Search engine optimization (SEO)?
Whilst considered almost a 'black art', in simple terms it is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Naturally, the earlier a site appears in a search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As part of an online marketing strategy, our Search Engine Optimisation process takes in to account how the current most popular search engines work (Google / Yahoo / MSN / etc.) and what your target audience is likely to be searching for. Optimising a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to ensure that the site architecture is as easy as possible for the search engines to index the pages correctly.
Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics are often incorporated into the website development and design process. The term "search engine friendly" is often used to describe a site that has menus and page layouts that a Search Engine spider (e.g. Googlebot) likes.
A website developed using our Content Management System is by default built in a search engine friendly way, thus allowing us to easily update the page titles, descriptions, keywords as well as the page content.
As well as optimising the architecture and content of a website, an important part of search engine optimisation (SEO) is to ensure that are lots of links from other 'related' websites back to yours. This is critical in ensuring that the search engines rank your website highly based on your websites 'authority' (especially if the sites linking to you are highly ranked too).
We work with our clients to develop a solid SEO program that is designed to drive lots more relevant traffic to your website rather than just improve 'hits' by using inappropriate 'link farm' techniques often used by SEO companies trying to make a 'quick win'. We often dovetail the process with a PPC campaign as this can often speed up the development process and quickly give a new site a 'shot in the arm'.
Ultimately, its all about return on investment for our clients so we have to establish an SEO campaign that delivers results that match their budget and expectations - and we have plenty of examples that prove we can!