We quite often get enquiries from people asking us to “SEO their website”. They would like us to perform a batch of changes for their desired keywords and from this put them in the first position in Google. Unfortunately it’s not that simple…
Before doing anything it’s important to do some research in to the relevant keywords that will be used and make sure that they correlate to the website’s page structure. Quite often the way that we want users and the way that we want search engines to view the website are completely different. In these instances it may be required to change the website’s structure, re-evaluate the keywords, or find an alternative method to achieve the desired search engine optimisation (SEO).
An example here would be “search engine optimisation Salisbury” or “Salisbury seo”, two different sets of keywords that may be important to us, but it’s likely that we’d want only one corresponding page on our website. Should we aim for both sets of keywords being integrated in to a single page? Split this page in to two? Or perhaps utilise our blog to help us?
Once we have a keyword strategy and a plan of action we can make the initial batch of changes that will ensure that the website has everything in place so that Google can correctly index it. By this I mean that it has the titles, ‘meta tags’, headings, sitemaps and content all in place and all correlating to the desired keywords.
This is usually where clients consider the process complete, but in reality it’s where it all starts.
The next stage would be to create benchmarks for the desired keywords so that we can monitor their progress, and to periodically review what has happened, and why.
Back to our example, it’s possible that “search engine optimisation Salisbury” has done really well, yet “Salisbury SEO” not so. In this instance we’d need to look at why and, depending on the method used at the outset, look at rectifying this.
Also, our competitors may also have been optimising their website for the same keywords, and so we could have lost our ranking not due to our website getting worse, but due to theirs being improved. Or we may have chosen keywords that, at this stage in our website’s life, are realistically unobtainable.
With search engines such as Google becoming far more complex, it’s strongly recommended that you don’t try and trick them. If you do, an update their algorithm could result in your website being penalised.
It’s for this reason that these days for our search engine optimisation (SEO) services, we do not continually tweak and adjust pages, but we work with our clients and discuss ways that we can add unique and relevant content to the website, that not only benefits the users, but is also beneficial to the search engines.
The trick with search engine optimisation (SEO) is to write high quality content in such a way that it naturally fits in to your website, plus of course to have the relevant infrastructure in place.
This is of course can be harder than it sounds, and this is where we come in. We work as SEO consultants to work with you through this process to continually improve your rankings.
There are no quick-fixes, and it usually takes more than a one-off batch of changes, but the end result is a website that not only performs better in search engines, but also provides useful content for users that will encourage them to buy from you.
We are Webbed Feet UK, we offer search engine optimisation in Salisbury.