Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Internet search is one of the easiest ways for web users to find the sites of interest to them. As most web users expect to find what they are looking for on the first two or three pages of results it is important ensure your website is found among the top of the results from web search engines such as Google and Yahoo!.
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO helps your website rank highly on search engines under the keywords and key phrases that are most important to your business. For example, if your business is a jewellery shop in Birmingham then you want to appear as high in the results for the term "jewellery shop birmingham" as possible. There is no quick and easy way to achieve this, if there were every Birmingham jewellery shop would be top of the listings! Instead a number of techniques need to be utilised and combined they have the effect of improving your listing in search engines such as Google.
There are many organisations that claim to offer simple ways of reaching the top of the search results but in truth no one can guarantee a first page position on sites like Google because Google constantly revise the criteria that determines how sites are listed. However certain fundamentals will always apply and these include a well structured, standards compliant XHTML build with SEO kept in mind during the development phase to ensure effective use of headings and links within a page.
Submission to the search engines is also important and included in the services that I offer is the submission to the 25 leading search engines and a Google sitemap. A Google sitemap lists all the pages on your site in XML format and tells Google how the site is laid out in order to give Google a better chance of understanding and listing your site, this is another technique that on it's own does very little but the combined effect this service offers in conjunction with other techniques makes for a better chance of a top listing on Google.
The final piece of the SEO jigsaw is an effective Search Engine Marketing campaign.
