Kent House have been part of the team and been very responsive. Their advice is greatly valued and the speed of delivery means we have achieved so much with our site.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
What is SEO?
SEO improves a website`s coding, content and link relationships so as to achieve a high position in ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ listings on the search engine results page (SERP) for specific search terms. The other two items appearing on SERPS are ‘sponsored’ or ‘pay-per-click’ listings, placed above the ‘natural’ listings and down the right hand side of the page, and directory listings which are located at the bottom of the SERPS.
In principle, the SEO process involves six distinct phases:
- Keyword Strategy
- Site Design & Structure
- Optimising Web Pages
- Link-building
- Getting Indexed
- Monitoring and Adjustment
Since an SEO campaign revolves around search engines, it is essential to understand how they work. Web-users often assume, when searching for a specific site that the search engine actually goes out onto the Web to ‘look around’. In fact, the job of searching the Web is vastly more complex than that, requiring massive amounts of hardware, software, and bandwidth. Search engines use automated software programs called spiders – known also as robots – to collect information about individual web pages. The main job of a search engine is to find Web documents, and download and store them for further analysis.
For search engines, the primary unit of data is a web page and anything that describes that web page (other than its content) is metadata. Metadata usually includes the page’s title, links, and the website’s description. It is vital not to exclude metadata from your website as you will only lose out in your search engine rankings.
Why Invest in SEO?
As the volume of websites and information on the Web expands, it is increasingly important that your site is highly rated in Google and other major search engines. Search engines are one of the main factors influencing website traffic, as over 70% off all traffic on the net is directed through them.
The field of “search engine optimisation” is overcrowded with “consultants” often peddling dubious and over-priced services. We believe it would be better for everyone if these people went back to selling Tupperware.
If you want your site to perform well in the search engines, we can help you to optimise your site’s structure, content and marketing to get the best possible results. We have a track record of delivering success and good value – often taking over from where the “consultants” have failed expensively.
Read more about SEO the Kent House way...
What SEO cannot do
A carefully thought through SEO campaign can get you to the top of the search engine ranking, but it cannot encourage customers to buy your products or services where there is little demand for them.
Equally, you may be listed high up in the search engines, but for search terms that no one uses. Therefore, in order to ensure that you are targeting the optimum keywords, we advise you to perform a thorough keyword research first before embarking on your SEO strategy. Remember that a successful SEO strategy is not necessarily about targeting the broadest, most popular search terms, but more importantly it is about identifying keywords that people actually use, and can potentially lead to a business deal.
When working on your SEO campaign, try to avoid such unethical techniques as:
- Keyword stuffing (excessive repetition of your keywords in the text or meta tags in order to influence ranking).
- Use of keywords in the meta tags that are not reflected in the page content.
- Creating multiple pages with virtually identical content.
- Automatically generated doorway pages which contain little user oriented content.
You may also be interested in learning more about Pay-Per-Click Advertising.