Search Engine Optimisation

Online marketing is becoming increasingly important to UK business, as recent research from the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) suggests.

2005 witnessed a staggering 46 per cent rise in online advertising spend amongst UK firms alone, taking the total to £0.67 billion (estimated). This rise easily outstripped increases relating to other forms of media, with total UK advertising spend perking up five per cent to £20.8 billion (estimated) over the course of the year.

With increased budgets being earmarked for online spend, marketing directors are facing ever-greater pressures to demonstrate a decent return on this investment. And the web optimisation services provided by a range of Internet search specialists are a key part of the armoury.

Pay-per-click services are vital to search engine optimisation. Through this model, advertisers bid to be associated with specific words and phrases and in exchange gain a prominent position when these words are entered into a search engine.

How to improve search engine rankings

So you've launched your business and have a brand new website, but there's one major problem – nobody is finding you because you don't have good Internet search engine rankings.

If you liken web users with more traditional shoppers, there are 3 basic categories:

When a seeker searches for their item of choice using any one of the existing search engines, you want your website to be listed on the first page of their search results. You should also be looking to encourage the seekers to pick you for subsequent purchases, which will largely be dependent on their first experience of dealing with you (usually the first point of contact is your website).

When a potential shopper types in a ‘product or service related keyword’ and your website is so far down the results pages that no-one will ever find you, your investment in your website is going to be wasted.

There is so much competition for high rankings that unless you design your site with search engines in mind, you will never achieve the position you're looking for. This design process is called "Search Engine Optimisation".

You can engage professional assistance to do it for you, alternatively if you have a smaller budget and are prepared to invest some time and effort, you could have a measure of success, doing it yourself. Either way here are some suggestions to get you thinking about improvements;

It might seem obvious but the keyword that you choose to optimise your site could make or break your rankings. For instance, you might think that your customers are searching for "non-slip safety ladders" but if you're wrong then you won't attract any traffic.

You can use tools like the Yahoo! Search Marketing Selection Tool to identify which words people are using to find your product and how many times people search for particular terms.

Once you've decided which keywords to use, you'll need to incorporate them into your web page in a way that search engine software recognises.

When someone enters a search term, the engine hunts through its database to find sites with matching keywords. Search engine optimisation experts believe that the search engines allocate higher rankings to websites which mention the keyword several times in their web pages.

However, you need to strike a balance. If you repeat your keywords too often, the search engines might think that you are trying to "spam" them and will penalise you as a result. Try and mention your keywords about 10 times for every 300 words of text.

As well as looking at keyword density, search engines determine how relevant a site is for a search term based on the number of quality websites that link to yours. You can get links by submitting your website to directories focusing on your business category or by exchanging links with sites in similar fields to yours.

Many people try to achieve high rankings by attempting to trick search engines. You may have come across organisations that promise high rankings through practices that have been designed to attract the search engines. Although it might result in a short-term boost to your rankings, the search engine companies will discover what you're doing and may find some clever ways to penalise you. It is definitely not worth risking a permanent ban for the sake of temporary traffic.

Contact your local Accredited Partner for more details.

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