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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO seems to be mentioned everywhere, but where to start?

Firstly, be aware that around 80% of people find your website via a search engine. The predominate leader in this market is currently Google™, and it is Google that SEO is mainly concentrated around these days.

To succeed at SEO you need a plan and you need to decide what budget can be allocated. It is also very important to define what determines "success" to you personally. For example, if sales rose 5% in the first year, would that satisfy the cost of your SEO efforts? SEO can become a very obsessive and needless to say, expensive, occupation. One must set clear and sensible objectives. "I want to be number 1 on Google" is not a sensible objective for example - although in saying that we have achieved first position rankings. SEO is fast-moving and one week is rarely the same as the next.

In some cases, a website can get very high rankings simply because certain keywords are less competitive than others. For example the search term "web designer axarquia" yields 50,000 results, and should bring you to this website, hopefully, but "web designer marbella" yields over a million results. This is mainly because "Marbella" is a very competitive keyword, and there are lots of web designers in Marbella all jostling for high rankings. A business in one location simply may not need as much SEO effort as another, but it all depends on who and where your potential customers are; businesses invariably have many different SEO criteria.

In our time, Wombat Web have worked alongside a selection of dedicated SEO companies. These companies perform proactive ongoing work for their clients, and the secret is in the detail of what they do. By paying attention to small things, rankings improve, and websites get more exposure. Trying too hard with SEO often ends poor rankings. Search Engines are very clever and the geeks at Google know all the tricks that people think get them higher rankings, but which in fact end up getting them penalised.

So what do we do? SEO invariably starts with a close look at your existing website code, and then adjustments will then follow, for example:
  • Your website structure and layout will be scrutinised and made more SEO-friendly. URL rewrites or more clever URL manipulation may be employed. This can be a large chunk of the work involved as links are what drive Search Engines
  • Keywords relevant to your business will then be added
  • Close attention will be given to your copy, and the quality of your copy, your links, and the frequency at which content changes
  • We'll look in to getting your size more "buzz" through blogs, forums and recripricol links with quality peers
  • The accessability of your site and its adherance to web standards will also be a factor
  • XML Feeds will be created for products, via Google Base and Sitemaps
  • Page tracking will be added, e.g. via Google Analytics, to track keyword usage and track visitors
  • Ongoing work will continue to get the site indexed further and to change keywords and monitor the results
SEO techniques should not be a closely guarded secret, indeed any SEO who cannot show their results and techniques should generally be avoided.

SEO also needs close monitoring, so that improvements, and failures, can be spotted. Tools such as Google Analytics can be used here, and ongoing changes (tweaks) to your website will nearly always be required. Other tools such as Google Base, Adwords and other SEO tools-of-the-trade will often be employed, thus approaching SEO on multiple fronts. You'll need ongoing work to reap the benefits of SEO.

Wombat Web have SEO'd many large transactional websites that sell many hundreds of different products. Apart from SEO, implementing sound business practices is also paramount. Customer support, website security, reliability, exchange and refund policies, privacy policies, stock control and reliable delivery times are all examples of things that need to take priority. A web business is still a business, after all.

For a chat about SEO, please contact us in the first instance. We only have fixed monthly fees for our SEO work and it can make all the difference to your web venture. We'll be happy to show you some of our work and techniques face-to-face.