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On 12/03/11 06:47, Henry Bremridge wrote: > > I have been asked to get a company website high on the google lists. I am > not sure if website design and search engine optimisation are part of the > same discipline or separate. I think the answer is both "part of" and "separate". Sites should be designed with accessibility in mind, both for visually impaired humans, browsers with limited features (think mobiles - although these days that might not be terribly limiting), and also search engines. Sites should also be engaging and informative to encourage use and linking. Google ranks on both usage and linking structure (not merely number of links), indeed I believe usage is often far more important these days based on the pages Google cares about on the websites I maintain. Any page users visit and sit on for extended periods catches Google's eye. Some aspects of search engine optimisation clearly fall outside of website design. For example building links from relevant sites, submission to relevant directories. Keyword analysis and competitive analysis, i.e. finding out what relevant phrases people are searching for, and how your competitors (or even group who use similar keywords) stack up for those phrases. The "secret tools" here are those supplied by Google for AdWords advertising, since they tell you who searches for keywords of interest, relevant keywords on your site, synonyms, and lots more. If you sign up for an adwords accounts (free) you get these tools (for free), and Google will send you a voucher for some free advertising as well. > Can anyone recommend somebody in the SW? I've done a little, but I've mostly focused on fixing what is broken "on-site". This can only go so far. i.e. registering better domain names, fixing those missing image alt tags, fixing broken linking structure, encouraging use of appropriate URL structures, fixing broken web pages (no really despite Google being pretty laid back about mark-up people still manage to break sites in ways that Google didn't anticipate), where appropriate adding site maps to ensure content that can't be reached directly is indexed, or adjusting priority of pages. Also these days ensuring sites load quickly is regarded as an "SEO" issue. As regards recommendations, I've only seen one company do a really successful job for a client (without taking undue risks) at the off-site SEO work, and they were based in India. Some of the on-site and off-site stuff one can do oneself, and it avoids the problem of finding folk who are trusted not to take short cuts and explaining your business to them. If you haven't tried Google Webmaster, Analytics and AdWords, then I'd suggest signing up to all three for the site (other, better analytics tools are available, any will do). You may well decide on seeing them that you want to outsource the relevant work, but at least by then you'll be a more informed consumer, and in a better position to understand what you are offered, and track what is done. Short cuts here can be mysteriously painful. Having seen one client hire a bunch of cowboys, and effectively disappear overnight from Google never to return (when they were ranking quite well for their product pages before). They should probably just have junked the domain and bought a new one, but it was an expensive mistake. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq