Archives
Categories
Posts in the “SEO” category
SEO is the new double glazing
In the seventies hardly anybody had double glazing. Back then, just as now, the benefits were undeniable. The additional insulation it provided would cut energy bills while adding value to the property. A few handymen with DIY skills installed their own. Other forward-thinking homeowners paid local tradesmen to fit tailor-made secondary glazing. Despite the relatively high cost of these early solutions, the popularity of double glazing snowballed. The long term savings more than justified the installation costs. Double glazing was simply too good an investment to ignore.
It wasn’t long before the bandwagon began to roll. The greed-fuelled eighties arrived, bringing the armies of salesmen who were out for a quick buck. A whole new industry was born, driven by door to door canvassing, teatime telesales calls and direct mailing. The majority of double glazing companies were selling a mass-produced product, while some were still just honest tradesman providing a quality bespoke product as a bolt on to their existing services. Unfortunately a few were outright cowboys.
OK, not double glazing in the conventional sense, but the best glazing photograph I had. The Sage in Gateshead, Newcastle.
History is renowned for repeating itself. If you’re a business owner, or if you look after a website, then the chances are you’ve been on the receiving end of these same sales techniques as used by SEO companies. SEO – or search engine optimisation – is the process of modifying a website to enhance its search engine performance. Rarely do people look beyond the second or third page of search engine results, so the SEO holy grail is to get your website listed at the top of the first page. Barely a week goes by that I don’t answer the phone to a SEO salesperson promising to boost my website traffic. Of the spam the deluges my inbox daily, some will inevitably be offering to improve my search engine rankings. I even get the occasional flier sent through the good old fashioned post which purports to guarantee top ten positions based on my choice of keywords.
A website that ranks highly on Google or other popular search engines will inevitably receive more traffic than one that does not. Unless your potential customers already know the address of your website, the chances are that the only way they will find you is via a search engine. What is more, a survey by top search engine marketing company iProspect suggests that 33% of internet users attribute major brand status to companies appearing in the first few results of a search. It comes as no surprise then that SEO is the new must have enhancement for website owners who appreciate the benefits of having an effective web presence.
It also comes as no surprise that the demand for search engine optimisation has spawned another new industry. Like the double glazing specialists before them, SEO consultants come in all shapes and sizes. Some are very good, others are not so good. The worst will grossly overstate the possibilities, some will offer misleading guarantees which cannot be fulfilled and some use underhand methods to achieve short term results, jeopardising your website’s future ratings. In February 2006 Google famously banned BMW’s website from appearing in their search results after the German car manufacture used keyword heavy pages as “doorway” pages which automatically redirected visitors to other pages of their website.
Just like double glazing, good SEO is an investment. It takes time and money to put in place, and SEO will pay dividends in the long term. Just like double glazing, once the principles of SEO are understood they are fairly straightforward to implement. Just like double glazing, when good SEO practices are maintained on your website, it will continue to perform and give returns on your investment for years to come.
As with double glazing, there is a wide range of SEO companies to choose from. We recommend that you tune out the noise and concentrate on finding a reputable and knowledgeable supplier who can work with you to provide a solution that suits your requirements. The best time to implement SEO is before the development of the website begins. For keywords to perform most effectively they will inform both the content and structure of the site. The ideal SEO company will also be a website design company and web developer. Integrating these processes will ensure an effective synergy between the three. The result will be a more effective, more visible and ultimately more profitable website.
In the coming weeks I’ll be posting more about search engine optimisation, so if it’s something that floats your boat then subscribe to our RSS feed. We’ll shortly be adding a new SEO page to our website too.
Come back soon!
Subscribe »Why Do We have A Blog?
There are several very good reasons why we have incorporated a blog into our web site. It’s relatively simple to do after all.
- A blog is great tool for quickly adding new content to a web site. We chose WordPress, and its ease of use means we are more likely to keep updating the site on a regular basis, whenever one of us has ten minutes to spare.
- Visitors like fresh content. Keeping the site updated will encourage people to come back again and again. It all helps when building an online presence and winning customer mindshare.
- Search engines like fresh content too. As long as we keep it relevant it all counts towards ratings.
- We’re creative types, and blogging is form of self-expression. When we’ve got something to say it won’t do to bottle it up.
- We’re good at what we do, and blogging about it is way of proving it to the world.
It all makes sense doesn’t it. Perhaps you should have a blog on your web site. Don’t think about it for too long though - give us a call…