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.
Can anyone recommend somebody in the SW?
Thanks
What Simon said is useful. I'm an SEO consultant although I
do a lot more web development these days. SEO and web design fall
under the "web development" bracket and although skills are
typically required in both they are ultimately different
practices. Like Simon I've failed to see many people do it well so
I thought I'd share a couple of pointers that can be further
looked into;
- Offsite SEO, such as link building, is boring and takes
time. If your client wants to rank for competitive keywords
you need an ongoing plan. Be realistic and explain that SEO
isn't magic and is definitely not instantaneous.
- Provide the client with keyword research
(https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none)
as SEO isnt a very visible practice, a reason there are a lot
of scammers out there. Unlike Simon I haven't encountered
credible Indian companies.
- There are little Google tricks like "allinanchor" you
can use to measure competitiveness.
- Get your client to write lots of content (or hire a
copywriter). They usually hate this but content is food to
search engines.
- Qualified clients typically come from less generic
keywords. Start with small volume keywords that are less
competitive but highly relevant and work onwards from there.
SEO isn't always about the amount of hits - conversions are
more important in most scenarios.
- Directory submissions are still important but to
authoritative directories such as Thomson Local, Yell etc.
These are also important for the likes of Google Places which
is pretty prevalent these days.
- Add the business to Google Places and as much
information as possible as well as media such as images and
videos.
- Citations (being mentioned on a page) are starting to
become more important especially with the world being
"nofollowed".
- Site performance is playing a big factor these days.
Efficient CSS, output compression, cache management,
canonicalisation, compressed _javascript_/css, optimised images,
consistent link structure, etc etc. Checkout Google PageSpeed
for Firefox.
- Don't "over optimise". Title tags shouldn't be too
long, headings should be used how they were meant to be,
internal and external linking should be fairly natural. There
are a lot of resources on this online aimed at web designers.
- Host the site in the UK on a UK domain if its not
targeting a global market.
- Some websites will ultimately fail because they aren't
good. A website should be continuously development, improved
and monitored for errors etc.
That's off the top of my head. Like Simon mentioned Google
Webmasters, Analytics and AdWords provide you with a wealth of
information.
Gibbs
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