Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation refers to process of developing your website to increase it's visibility on search engines
for search queries relevant to your business. SEO affects the natural or organic listings (sometimes called rankings)
in the search engine results pages.

It is generally accepted that organic listings attract 65-70% of the clicks for a given results page. Unlike paid for listings (PPC), you are not charged when searchers click through to your site, so the business benefits of ranking well in the organic listings are clear.

How do Search Engines Work?

It's probably useful at this point to explain how search engines work, as in order to understand SEO, you first need to consider how search engines rank web pages.

The job of a search engine is to provide the user with relevant results based on the search query which they have submitted. It is in the interests of the search engine to return the most relevant results first, as a user will quickly tire of a search engine which consistently returns irrelevant web pages, and may go somewhere else for the information they need.

To do this, search engines send out programs (sometimes these are called 'spiders' or 'robots') which 'crawl' websites to evaluate their content. The data is then collated and stored (or indexed) by the search engine so that when a user types a search term into the search engine, it only needs to look through it's internal files to return results rather than searching the web. The search engine will therefore rank the pages on your site based on how closely the data collected by the spiders / robots matches the user's search terms.

How do we Approach SEO?

First and foremost, by gaining an understanding of your business. It's really important that we appreciate what you do (and indeed what you don't); as ultimately this will affect the search terms which you need to rank for.

There are many factors which can affect your site's ranking, but for the most part, the key elements of an SEO project can be split out as follows:

Techincal SEO

Here we check to see that there are no technical issues which are preventing the website being understood and ultimately indexed by the search engines. Clearly this is a key element of any SEO project, because if your site isn't indexed properly, then you certainly won't be appearing in the search engine results for the terms which are applicable to your business.

On-Page SEO

This encompasses the actual content on your website, internal linking and navigation and how this is presented to the search engines.

Having high quality, relevant content is important for both search engine rankings and users alike. Based on your business goals, we can optimise your existing content, and make recommendations with regard to the content which should be created, or (if you prefer) create it for you.

Link Building or Off-Page SEO

Inbound links (i.e. other sites linking to your site) are one of the most important factors the search engines look at when deciding the importance (and ultimately the rank) of one website versus another.

Link building is an essential part of any SEO project, however it is the quality of links, not the quantity which is really important.

Search engines have very strict guidelines in place with regard to link acquisition, and failure to comply could see you de-indexed (i.e. not showing up in the search engine results at all). We can help you with your link building efforts, or indeed take over the process on your behalf, thereby ensuring you avoid any penalties.

If you're considering undertaking an SEO project why not take advantage of our free link SEO Site Review, or if you prefer, why not call us on 020 8941 2364.