SEO – Search Engine Optimisation/Search Engine Optimization !

You may have the most wonderful web site in the world but if the search engines can't find it and don't rate it highly in their listings, then your investment has probably been wasted. Harsh, but true.

A survey by Enquiro/MarketingSherpa in 2004 found that in business-to-business purchasing decisions, 63.9% of respondents said that a search engine would be the first place they would look to research a product or service. Their 2007 survey shows that percentage has increased to well over 70%.

Research by OneUpWeb.com in 2005 showed that a top 10 ranking in Google increased site visitors by 5 times in the first month.

A survey in 2005 by iCrossing found that search engines are the most popular tool for finding out about products and services before making a decision, 74% of respondents used search engines to research products.

So you need to make sure your web site ranking highly in the search engines. However, that's not going to help you if the people that access your site are the wrong people. So SEO is about increasing the amount of targeted traffic that comes to your web site from the search engines, i.e. getting more of your target audience looking at your web site.

SEO involves a wide range of activities all of which affect your ranking in the search engines. These activities fall into 2 categories:

• White hat
• Black hat

Strange terms ! Basically white hat refers to techniques and activities that increase your ranking without contravening the search engine guidelines. Black hat, as you might have guessed, are those techniques which go against the guidelines and which may work well, however, the risk is that your site gets banned, which, of course, is the total opposite of what you want to achieve.

Needless to say, I stick with the white hat techniques. I want to make sure you get lots of visitors to your site who are interested in your product(s) or services without risking your site being deleted from the search engine listings.

Some of the factors that influence your position in the search engine rankings are:

• The title of each page in your web site
• The keywords defined for your site (people don't see these)
• The degree of correspondence between these keywords and the text on your web site
• The number of sites that link to your web site
• The amount of genuine text on your web site (small sites with limited amounts of text don't rank well)

There are a couple of other things to be aware of in this area:

• Search engines to not respond rapidly to changes that will improve your ranking. Some patience is required.
• Search Engine Optimisation is not a one-off activity. Rankings are affected when the search engines change their ranking algorithm and when sites belonging to your competitors make changes. Keeping a track of this and taking the necessary action is part of the reason for my offer of an annual maintenance contract. It's an optional extra, but one which can help your target audience find your web site with ease.

With good Search Engine Optimisation, searchers can find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Let me help them find your web site !

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roger@rogerknight.info