Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

The major international search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. Internet users consult these search engines to find information on the web. Search engine optimisation is a method used to increase the chances of your site being listed in the top results for search queries relevant to your business. A top search engine ranking, particularly on Google, can drive large volumes of visitors, high sales conversions and a strong brand experience.

Optimising 'Findability'

The findability of your website refers to how easily search engines can find your website for relevant queries. The first step to optimise findability is to select a relevant domain name. If your target market is international a ".com" domain is appropriate. However, if your target market was the UK, you would select a ".co.uk" domain. This identifies your business as relevant to the UK and avoids you competing with global search queries. Findability is also determined by your website structure. Search engines favour well structured HTML pages with a clean navigation path. As part of our SEO program we advise against purely frame or flash-built sites, because search engines cannot access content within these technologies. We also advise on content structures and navigational paths that are accessible to search engines, but also appropriate to your target market. For example, while search engines do not favour image navigation (e.g. a map) or drop-down menus, it would be difficult to operate a real estate website without online property searches often in the form of drop-down menus or maps. The objective thus is always to balance your website's 'findability' with your visitor's experience. Findability of database-driven websites is particularly problematic, because search engines do not like dynamically generated pages. In this instance we generally recommend a URL re-writing project. A site map is also a basic website feature that enables search engines to easily find and index your web site pages.

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Optimising Rank (Position)

Once your website is found by the search engines, how it is ranked for a particular search query is based on factors that vary for each search engine. However, the most important factors effecting rank are; the quality of links linking to your website, the quality and relevance of your website content and the quality of your website's cross-linking.

During keyword research we will have identified strategic keywords for which you would like to improve rank. Creating content that is filled with strategic keywords, increases the chances of your website ranking highly for that term. As search engines 'crawl' your site they will look for recurring content themes, e.g. if you are a books website and there are large instances of the word 'books', you are likely to rank higher for the term 'books' than, e.g. 'magazines'. Use of keywords in website headings and <meta> titles can also improve your website's rank.

Search engines cannot read images, but they do follow links. Cross-linking within your site is an optimisation technique used to encourage search engines to follow keyword-rich links from page to page. This technique can improve rank for the term used in the link. Tagging images with keywords can also assist search engines in reading the images and ranking these terms.

The most important factor effecting rank however, is the quality of websites linking to your site. Search engines, particularly Google, deem your site to be high quality and high relevance if there are trusted sites linking to yours. Moreover, sites that are on-topic with similar content, but which are non-competing generate 'link value' when they link to your site. For example, if you were a real estate website and a number of property sites or directories linked to your site this would boost your site's rank, because the content is on-topic and the sites are non-competitive.

Building links from other websites to build rank is often referred to as link building. Think Web Marketing builds links and referral traffic from other websites as a strategic marketing technique and not just for search engine rankings. If you are interested in strategic link building techniques, please visit our section on Referral Marketing.

Client Carlton International ranks #1 on Google for the term "luxury real estate france" [Feb 2007]. (See the difference between natural and paid search listings below).

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Natural vs. Paid Search Engine Listings

Natural search engine listings appear on the left of the search engine page (outlined in green above) and take time to achieve. Paid listings generally appear as ad boxes to the right of the page (outlined in blue above), or sometimes as shaded horizontal links and are listings that you can pay to achieve (see our section on pay-per-click advertising).

If you would like us to carry out a search engine optimisation program for your site, please contact us.

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