Web sites aren’t magical. You cannot build it and expect “them to come”. No matter what anyone tells you, a well crafted site still needs to be designed and managed by someone who understands basic communication, advertising, marketing and sales principles.

Search engine optimisation consists of multiple techniques that are used to follow the rules for each individual search engine and apply these to your website to gain the best possible listing in each search engine index.

Sound like a mouthful? …… You should try actually doing it.

Search engine optimisation is not a simple case of following guidelines. At the time of writing this there are arguably 3 main search engines and several directories that should be the main focus of your marketing strategy. (See the Search Engine Tips section)

There is a big difference to submitting a normal website to search engines compared to CMS sites or even ecommerce websites. Different rules apply, and don’t let anyone tell you that submitting to 3,000 search engines for a one of payment will do the trick ……. it hasn’t in the past and never will.

It’s not enough to just design these days. You must design your site to ensure it is optimised for search engines. You must ensure that your visitors can navigate through your site to reach the information they seek. Once found that information must be easy to read, understand and prompt the visitor to act. Finally it must be good enough to invite them back and to have them tell their friends or work colleagues about you.

All marketing strategies are based on three main principles. You either need to increase the amount of customers you attract (acquire), keep hold of current customers (retain) or increase revenues from your existing customers (maintain rappor) and in most cases all three.

We can improve your business in any of these areas. As you would expect, we tailor our strategies to your business model, so that they are financially sustainable in the long term and where possible have an inherent competitive advantage.
Definitions of Search engine optimisation on the Web:

The term used to describe the marketing technique of preparing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken.

At its most basic level, search engine optimisation is a process of choosing keywords or phrases related to the site so that the site will receive a high placing in a web search. We say at its most basic level because this is an area all to its own when it comes to website design.

Lets consider this;

• Does your site have the right title tags, meta description and keywords?
• Is there a theme set to the site?
• Have you got the right alt tags set for images – do they match your theme?
• How about your heading text – have you set this yet – did you use style sheets to do it?
• Have you commented any flash correctly?
• What about the C-class of your server – is it ok?
• Titles in any href  tags  – did you set these?
• Do you know the highest KEI for your keyword groups you have chosen?
• What is the competition for each of your keyword phrases on Google, Yahoo, MSN?
• Did you check your frequency for keywords on the home page (or all pages)?
• Have you thought about a link strategy – who are you approaching?
• Have you thought about the socio tagging of your site?
• Are you listed in the main directories
• Do you have an active site map – either self generated or using xml to feed to google?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a very large set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listings. This is seriously a completely separate area from design in many respects, and this is the main reason many design companies don’t do it, don’t know it or don’t offer SEO services. It can get very scientific and it is very analytical in nature – the very thing designers tend not to be.

The short of all of this is that search engine optimisation should be your friend …. embrace it!