SEO Explained

There are many factors involved in Search Engine Optimisation.  Our holistic approach considers all of the following:

Excellent Web design

First impressions make a huge difference.  We all know how quickly we hit our 'back' button if we don't like what we see after ‘Googling’ a Website.  Your site must look professional and be styled to position your business exactly as your visitors expect it to be.  Check our portfolio to see how we approach the challenges of Website design and how we have succeeded for our clients.

User-friendly

Your navigation, layout and menu structure must make it easy for visitors to get around and find what they are looking for.  This may involve the use of ‘breadcrumbs’ or drop-down menus, as well as highlighting active sections or sub-pages.  A sitemap helps provide an overview of all your content.

Rich, appropriate & high-quality content

Search Engines index sites based on the information they find when they ‘spider’ them.  People also rate Websites based on what they read.  So your Website must be filled with informative, helpful, relevant and up-to-date information.  Not only must it explain what your business does, it must provide evidence that you know what you are talking about (just like this page is doing for us!) and may also need to have good links, supporting evidence, case studies, testimonials, etc.

Technical considerations

There are lots of technical considerations to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).  As you might expect, Search Engines use computer programs to look at your site, so you must make it as easy as possible for them to do this.  This is what is known as being ‘Search Engine friendly’.  We run a full report on your site's Search Engine friendliness to determine if there are any problems, such as bad code, content being hidden from the spiders, or other factors that may cause your site to slip down the list.  Any issues exposed will need to be addressed in order to improve your SEO chances.

External links

One of the big factors of SEO is how many other Websites think your site is good enough to link to.  Search Engines figure that the more popular the linking site is, the more credible your Website must be.  A lot of this linking is done without anyone asking you – people will just link to you because they like your site or find a particular article interesting.  You will want to encourage this by providing easy linking mechanisms.  You can also submit your site to directories, offer exchange links with your clients and associates and set up pages on a variety of Websites, such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter that link back to your Website.

A reason for people to come back

In the end, you can get all the Search Engine traffic in the world, but if there is nothing for anyone to hang around for or get to know about you and your business, all your SEO investment and work is wasted.  The final piece of the SEO puzzle is to retain the visitors that you attract.  Offer them something.  Provide articles that they might link to.  Allow them to comment on those articles and tell them that they will be notified if anyone responds.  This is the self-fulfilling, snowballing feedback loop of SEO.  The more people you get, the more content they link to or contribute to, the more Search Engines index you and rank you, the more people you get... We like to call this phenomenon 'Perpetual Promotion'.