Online Marketing & SEO

“Have you invested thousands of pounds on a website that nobody ever visits?”

SEO is the process of aiming to get listed higher on search engines (such as Google). We use the word ‘aiming’ as there is no guaranteed method of ensuring a number one position (ranking), via organic methods (explained below). SEO is based on optimising web pages for ‘Keywords’ or most commonly ‘Key Phrases’ – these are words and phrases that people type into search engines in order to find web pages that contain content they are searching for.

Primarily there are two methods of Search Engine Optimisation:

Pay Per Click (PPC) – also known as Sponsored Links

This method does guarantee success - and instant success at that. However, this can be a very costly exercise for the following reason. It is based on an auction of how much you are prepared to pay for a click (you get listed right at the top of the search results for free, but you pay every time your listing is clicked). Of course you can simply outbid your competitors and place yourself right at the top, and they can counter you in response.

Is PPC right for you?

It certainly can be if you can convert enough clicks into business. If you are running an on-line shop and you are price competitive (Internet shoppers are price lead customers), carefully controlled PPC will probably form part of your ongoing sales strategy.

We can setup and manage PPC campaign for you on an ongoing basis to ensure that you get the best value out of this route to market.

Organic SEO 

Organic SEO is a far more complex method but success via this method is the ultimate goal. Search engines score web pages on fairly large criteria so it is not possible to explain all of these here (some are known only to the search engine).

However, a few of the primary best practices are:

• Make sure your website is not full of programming errors – use the W3C XHTML validator to indentify errors in your site
• Make sure that your website does not discriminate against disabled people – use the Wave Validator to check your site for accessibility
• Only discuss a small amount of topics on each webpage, preferably only discuss a single topic on each page
• Place keywords within your body text that people are likely to search for (this is known as keyword density)
• Do not place irrelevant keywords on your pages (where these keywords are not relevant to the body text of the page)
• Try to get other websites to link to yours – so that your site appears to be recommended by others 

In short Organic SEO is all about being a responsible publisher of information. Do the right thing in respect of the above and with our help and you are very likely to rise up the rankings.

Is Organic SEO right for you?

It is considered the ‘Holy Grail’ to be listed at number one organically as there are no costly clicks to pay for. If you have a website you are at risk of wasting your entire investment if you are not listed high in search engines.

Note that Organic SEO results can take many months to build, which is why it is often used in conjunction with PPC.

We can setup and manage an organic SEO campaign for you on an ongoing basis to ensure that you rise up the rankings over time.