Introduction
If the purpose of a website is to attract new business, it is important that it receives an prominent position at search engines. This is where search engine optimisation comes in. Put simply, search engine optimisation means optimising the design of a website so that it performs well at search engines.
How do search engines work?
Once a web page has been submitted to a search engine, some time later, the search engine will use a computer program to look at the design of your web page and determine what it is about. There are three potential outcomes:
- The search engine robot understands what the page is about and decides to list it
- The search engine robot is unable to work out what the page is about and hence cannot list it
- The search engine robot believes the web page is spamming (attempting to cheat or outwit the search engine)
Assuming all is well and the robot can understand the page, it then has to decide what keywords the page relates to and how strong that relationship is. The pages that come top in search engine results are the pages that the search engine considers to be most relevant to the keywords entered by the user.
Why would a search engine not be able to understand what a web page is about? There are many reasons, but typically they include inappropriate use of images or badly designed websites using frames. Three years ago our parent Support for Organisations Ltd, carried out extensive research into how well websites were designed and found 39% of website home pages were designed such that they had virtually no change of being understood by a search engine. See search engine investigation
What happens if a page is considered as spamming?
Best case it is removed from the search engine database, worse case it is blacklisted.
What is considered as spamming?
Any attempt to trick a search engine into listing a web page for keywords it has little to do with OR any attempt to try to achieve an artificially high position, by attempting to hide keywords. The investigation carried out by Support for Organisations revealed 38% of websites were spamming, many were probably doing it inadvertently.
Why is search engine optimisation necessary?
A perfectly natural question. Many website owners automatically assume that if they submit their website to a search engine, they will automatically be listed at the top of the search results. It is important to realise that when you submit a website to a search engine, you are requesting that the search engine considers the pages of your site for inclusion in its results. You are submitting for consideration not submitting for acceptance.
If a site is not designed to optimise its chances at search engines, frequent submissions to search engines will make NO difference to its position. On the other hand the way a website is designed is 100% related to its chances of success, therefore effort should be spent in getting the design right, rather than submission.
The pitfalls of search engine optimisation?
SEO has become big business as more and more companies are desperate to do well at search engines, sadly there are also companies out there that exploit this demand. Within Support for Organisations Ltd there is a trading division called Website Medics, that specialise in redesigning sites to perform better at search engines. Website Medics spend a great deal of time investigating how websites are designed, they also analyse sites produced by SEO companies. Some of these companies use methods of hiding keywords to gain a good position. At the time of writing, we know of at least 4 methods that can be used to hide keywords without being penalised. The problem is, as more and more people realise these methods, more and more websites will start to use them. eventaully search engines will change their algorithms to detect web pages using them and all offending pages will be dropped. This is good news for the original SEO company, they simply go back to the site owner, with the message that the search engine has changed its algorithm and ask for more money to change the design again. It is possible to do well at search engines without hiding keywords, its just a little harder, but the long term benefits outway the hard work.
What about guarantees?
Once there are 11 websites designed absolutely perfectly, one is going to fail to get in the top ten. It tough but it's true. So with traditional search engines, there can be no guarantees There is a method to guarantee a particular position called "pay per click", where the person "submitting" a page agrees to pay an amount each time someone visits the page. Using this method the person making the highest bid gets the top place. But be warned: Unlike traditional search engines, you only stay top while you pay; prices generally rise and its easy to get into a bidding war with a rival; avoid paying other companies to do you "pay per click" you can do it much cheaper yourself. We give FREE advise to all our customers on the internet marketing options including "pay per click". If you are considering going to a company that offers guarantees, seek as many references as you can and make sure they have worked with the company for at least twelve months and ideally 2 years. It could save you from making a costly mistake.
Do affordable ecommerce perform search engine optimisation?
Affordable ecommerce are happy to perform search engine optimisation for websites we design, it requires more work so there is a small incremental cost. However, bear in mind our content management system is designed to enable the site owner to influence the position of their site.
We already have a website could you redesign it for us?
We do not redesign sites, it is often more work than a new website. We are happy to design clients a new site or alternatively you can contact Website Medics for website redesign
