Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation is integral to having your website found by search engines and listed in their 'organic' search results.

Research shows that 'organic' search results (referring to those results that appear in the main area of a search results listing) are scanned first and generally are viewed as being more relevant than 'paid-for' results. Of course to get good organic results certain work must be carried out.

What do you need to know about Search Engine Optimisation?

There is a lot of information about how to sucessfully develop a well optimised website for search engines that can become confusing. As such we have listed what we believe to be the five most important things you NEED to know about Search Engine Optimisation:-

• Ensure your site is coded using clean, compliant and accessible code. This will help to make the site work across different Browsers and Operating Systems but importantly (and increasingly importantly) it will help with the speed of your site.
• Ensure your site is using the correct Metatags for each page and that the Headings and Content all relate and are coherent.
• Don't use endless Keywords / Key Phrases in the Metatags - keep it specific to the page and relevant, Google does not Index (keep a record) Keywords and phrases. It does however index Title and Description.
• Update your site regularly. Daily is best. Weekly is okay. Monthly as a minimum. If you don't update regularly don't expect to Rank well.
• Let other relevant sites know about your site and don't be scared to shout about your site across the Internet. A few well-placed articles and forum discussions with links to your site are worth a lot more than you might think.

Keep your website relevant

Above all with SEO you need to ensure your site is genuine and relevant to the topic, subject, service or product you are wishing to promote. There is no point trying to optimise and rank well for Strawberry Jam when you are selling Sausages by cramming in lots of Strawberry Jam keywords just because you have inside information that strawberry jam buyers also buy sausages!

Google and other search engines will quickly work it out and you are likely to receive a penalty. This may seem an extreme example but it happens time and again.

A Freindly Warning

Be wary of approaches by BlackHat SEO agents who promise to get you to the top of Google for a given keyword.

This is extremely tempting and if you are promoting a site that only needs a short life span (eg. a fad product) then this is fine. However, the penalties imposed by Google, if you are caught, can mean the end of that web site ever ranking well with Google.

The way the BlackHat SEO works is by creating lots of links from sites to your site. This is because Google likes sites with lots of links to it as it makes it look like lots of people have linked to your site because it is good. That is the theory and there is a formula for how this is worked out, relevant sites being more weighty. However, Google does not like to see too many links being added too quickly and also has formulae for punishment and you could end up with anything from a 6 to 999 page rank drop.

Use the BlackHat approach if you don't mind the possibility of effectively destroying your site. It is worth remembering point 5 above; a handful of relevant links to your site (added each month) is worth more than 100 irrelevant links. FD does not engage in BlackHat SEO, and never will, but we do work with genuine sites and use genuine link building as described in point 5 as part of an overall Search Engine Strategy.

Please contact us to see how we can make eMarketing find you new customers.