Most companies have embraced the technology of the internet are
have a website detailing all their products and services. Having
worked for a domain company for a number of years which also
offer web design it never ceases to amaze me how many people
phone us up complaining that their website is not coming up in
the search engines. We offer web design at an affordable price
and each site is built using the clients' specification not with
search engines in mind. Most web design companies are the same;
they build a site with your specification and text. If you want
a site that is search engine friendly this needs to be stated at
the start, although the price will go up considerably. Also you
can't say you want this and that and also be search engine
friendly. Generally what our web design customers want are not
the same as what search engines want.
Search engines want text rich site with a simple clear
navigation. A website built entirely in flash may look pretty
impressive but it will not function at all in the search
engines. Search engines are text analysis systems which can only
read text. Unless your web pages have plenty of text the search
engines will not think your site is relevant to list it high in
their search engine result pages (SERP's). If you have a page
with say 50 words but another site of the same subject has over
200 words, Google will rank the latter much higher up because it
believes it is more relevant than the page of just 50 words. As
well as rich text you also need links from other sites linking
to your site. This is giving you a vote and the more votes you
have from relevant websites the higher you will get ranked.
Sometimes pages that are number 1 have very little text but have
a huge amount of link popularity hence why Google places them at
the top position. Unless your site has lots of sites linking to
your site, you will need good copy on your page. The text on
your page needs to have the keywords you are targeting. There is
no point having a page about `dog food' without the words `dog
food' written a few times. Search engines do not know that
Pedigree Chum or Iams are different types of dog food. They
match the keywords' you put into the search engine with relevant
pages which contain those specific words.
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of optimising
a website for the search engines. This could include re-writing
the text on each page as well as creating a better navigation
that the search engine spiders can navigate well to find all the
pages on your site. There is not one SEO Company that can
guarantee high search engine placements as know one knows what
tomorrow will bring. The same can be said of stock brokers as
they cannot guarantee that a stock will rise. Or you could liken
the process to a football game; you cannot guarantee who will
win. If you are guaranteed a top placement by your SEO
specialist, the guarantee is false and you should stay well
away. No search engine optimisation company can guarantee
results the search engine algorithms can change unexpectedly. A
professional SEO specialist will be able to give you a rough
idea but no guarantees'. For example, I could do a bit of
research for a client who wants to be found under the search
phrase `vehicle leasing'. When you do a search for those terms
there are only just over 750,000 results which could appear to
not be that competitive. I have got pages on the front page with
over 20 million results in a matter of a couple of months. What
this could mean is that the 20 million results were websites
that were not that well optimised and with my skills getting on
the front page is easy. However with `vehicle leasing' the 750,
000 pages that already exist could have had years of
optimisation work done on them with years of link building to
build up the trust in their site which means no site has got a
chance. Also you don't know what other companies are planning.
Maybe a new Vehicle leasing company with a huge marketing budget
of 20 thousand a year might be working on their site. If I am
only working on your site for one day a week I will not be able
to compete with the companies with a huge budget, and 40 hours
of SEO work.
