Why do you need the Search Engine Optimization Audit?

Twenty billion pages of information!

How many pages does your site have? Five? Twenty? A hundred? Against twenty billion you have as much chance of being seen by potential customers as you have of winning the lottery, with last week’s winning numbers. Basically a cat in hell’s chance! [read more]

But don’t despair just yet. There is a solution. Search Engines.

Search Engines are some of the most integral tools on the Web. People use search engines almost as often as they send email. Nearly 90% of us use search engines to find information and the numbers are increasing. There was an increase of 55% in the number of searches conducted in 2005 compared to one year earlier. [read more]

The downside is, of course, that there are still twenty billion plus pages – it’s just that now there’s an easier way of finding them. So how do you go about ensuring your page gets found? Well, Search Engine Optimization of course. That’s what I’ve been talking about all along.

The thing about Websites is that, for the most part they are designed with the user in mind. If they’re well made they’ll be designed to conform to guidelines on accessibility, usability and the like. This is a good thing – if you’re human.

Unfortunately, Search Engines aren’t human, and neither are the Spiders, Crawlers, Bots and other scuttly little things that do all the searching and collating for them. They can’t read images, for instance. Can’t read multimedia. JavaScript passes them by like so much gobbledygook (much like us, I admit), basically anything that isn’t HTML code or simple text is just rubbish to them. They can’t read it, and if they can’t read it, then it isn’t going to get indexed. Which means your site isn’t going to appear in the Search Engine Results Pages, or SERP’s as we in the trade call them. [read more]

Fortunately there is a way to optimize your Web pages to work well with the crawling minions of the Search Engines. You guessed it. Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is probably the single most important development on the Internet right now. Simply put it means optimizing your Website so that it is quickly found by the spiders, crawlers and bots and gets displayed prominently in the SERP’s when someone searches under a specific keyword or phrase. [read more]

The need for great links is essential in getting Search Engine Optimization to work. There are many ways to get these links but most Webmasters find they haven’t the time to spend hours each day building links to their sites. That’s why one of the first question’s that ever gets asked about link building is; do I delegate this in-house or outsource?

If you choose to outsource you should be aware that many firms that provide link development will often use under-trained people working with software programs that crawl the Web automatically sending out emails to other Webmasters. As you’d expect this doesn’t provide quality links. If anything you might find yourself receiving email complaints instead.

Bringing the development in-house is time consuming but far more productive in the longer term as the numbers and quality of the links generated will be much more beneficial than using an out-sourced firm. Hiring and training them requires time and effort but that’s where the Search Engine Optimization Report comes in. [read more]

One thing about the Search Engine Optimization Report that’s probably worth mentioning is that it only deals in ethical SEO.

You remember the old Westerns in the cinema don’t you? Well, you’ve probably seen them playing somewhere in the lost hours on TV at least. Anyway, the good guys always wore white hats and the bad guys always wore black hats. Black Hat came to be used as a descriptive term for a Cracker (note, not a Hacker who is usually a White Hat), someone who breaks into a computer system or network with malicious intent. A White Hat works to expose a flaw, a Black Hat works to exploit one.

Well, Black Hat SEO Techniques are techniques to exploit flaws within the algorithms used to produce Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s). We don’t use Black Hat Techniques, they’re a false economy anyway as whatever short term gains they might provide they’ll eventually get your site removed from the SERP’s entirely. . [read more]

So we only use White Hat techniques that are designed to get your site listed high up in the SERP’s. “You can’t use what you can’t find”. It’s a simple maxim but it tells you all you need to know about why you need Search Engine Optimization.

But, of course, it doesn’t end there. Nothing ever does. Let’s say you’ve done the business of SEO, you’ve selected the right keywords, you’ve altered your code to maximise the results of the Spiders from Google, and you’ve built up an impressive collection of one-way and reciprocal links. People begin to find you. They come to your site in thousands. Then they leave again.

Damn it, why? Well, did you give any thought to your actual content? Building a Website with no content is like starting a land war in Asia – it’s doomed to failure.

So what is ‘content’?

Simply speaking it’s text that conveys information, whether that information is about a business, a product, a service, etc. The purpose of much of the content of web pages is to sell something. This can be anything from a plug to plugging next best thing in self-development. [read more]

That’s why our Search Engine Optimization Report also deals in ‘Copywriting’.

Copywriting is the ‘lost’ art of persuasion.

But copywriting is big business, so why do I call it the ‘lost’ art of persuasion?

Ever heard the phrase, “It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it”? That phrase has become endemic in advertising circles. It suggests that content is less important than style. And it’s bullshit. Are you really persuaded more by how someone looks that what they are saying? If you are then you’re an easy mark for a con artist and good luck to you. Even the name ‘con artist’ should tell you something about the lost art of persuasion – who decided that conning someone was artistic?

Persuasion is about being consistent – and remaining consistent. And the best way to be consistent is to tell the truth. . [read more]

As you can see, the Search Engine Optimization Report offers a full-service solution.

• A Benchmark Report showing your company’s current ranking in the search engines based on the terms you provided in the ‘Start’ document.

• A Technology Report will highlight any performance issues arising out of your server-side architecture.

• A Coding Analysis Report will provide you with clear guidelines for improving your Website’s search engine ranking and usability. This report focuses not only on HTML coding, including the correct use of Meta Tags and Robots Exclusion Protocols, but also on any client-side programming languages such as JavaScript.

• A Keyword Research Report will provide in-depth analysis of the search terms you provided as well as a revised and optimised list of keywords based on in-depth search engine results analysis.

• A Copywriting Report will provide analysis of your Website text to show how professional copywriting can improve search engine positioning and speak more clearly to your customers.

To learn more, or to order your Search Engine Optimization Report now, CALL US free on 0800 066 4366 and start to get noticed.