Search Engine Optimisation Fact Sheet

If you want to download this fact sheet as a PDF to read later, or to print out, please click here. Alternatively read on.


If one of your objectives for this year is to improve your position on the main search engines then here are some of the factors you will need to consider.

7 Key steps to search engine optimisation:

1. Domain Name:
Choosing a domain name that is descriptive of your business is vital if you want to be highly visible on the search engines. If you sell washing machines, don’t call yourself creativesupplies.com.

2. Page Names:
Ask your web developer to make sure your web pages are named with sensible names, that reflect the page’s contents.

3. Images (including navigation images):
Ask your web developer to make sure all your website images have ‘alt tags’. This means that search engines can ‘see’ the picture’s relevance to the webpage content. If your navigation buttons are images it is important that these have ‘alt tags’ that are the same as the page names.

4. Content (text on the pages):
Copy should be factual and informative and broken down into short sentences. People want to find what they are looking for quickly so bullet points are often an effective way of making an impact. It may be worth getting professional help to do this if you do not have the skills in-house.
You should also establish what your keywords are before you start writing. These are the words that you would expect people to search on to find your products or services. These then need to be incorporated into your text. Don’t overload your text with keywords, your copy has to make sense and search engines could penalise you if you try to cram multiple keywords into every sentence.

5. Site Description, ‘Meta Tags’ and Search Phrases:
Consider writing a short paragraph that best describes your business and its activities. Your web developer should be able to insert this into your website so that search engines will know to use it when they list your site. This is what people will see when they see your web address in search engines.

‘Meta Tags’ are not the most important factor to improve your ranking, but they can help search engines define the relevance of your business and content.

Search Phrases: Knowing what phrases your prospective customers are using to find your competitors, and what search phrases you think they might use to find you is very important. Make sure your web developer/SEO consultant is aware of your requirements.

6. Links (inbound and outbound):
Links are important, particularly inbound, to drive traffic to your website. They are also viewed by search engines as a sign of a good website and will therefore improve your page rank.

Getting your website listed on directory websites is a way of getting free inbound links. However, make sure they are relevant and from well-known sites, not just link farms. The better the quality of the sites that are linking to you the higher the value will be put on the link. Research where your competitors are listed and follow their listing, then find the places they are not.

Getting your website showing on other websites that are in related industries to your own will also improve your visibility. So think of your suppliers, customers and friends who may have a website that you can trade a link with.

If you sell washing machines, why not link to the manufacturers website, you may not get a link in return, but the more sites you link to also improves your ranking and you are providing your visitors with relevant quality information.

7. Updating:
Make sure that your site content is constantly changing. This will let the search robots know that your site is alive and well and providing fresh information for visitors. New content will keep your visitors coming back too.
Search Engine Optimisation is not an exact science and requires regular attention. If you are serious about staying at the top of search engine lists, then you need to do SEO on a regular basis.

SEO is not always about your own website, it is about the people above you, and what they are doing. As with offline marketing, you need to understand what your competitors are doing.

There are no time guarantees with SEO and it is often a case of gradual improvement and continual assessment and measurement.

If you need immediate results then the quickest way to achieve the first page of your chosen search engine is Pay Per Click advertising. You can assign a set budget and monitor the click through rate. The more you can afford, the more ‘click thru’s’ to your website. Not every ‘click thru’ will turn into a sale though, so you need to monitor your conversion rates to sales very carefully to make sure they are achieving a good return for your advertising costs.

To get maximum benefit from PPC advertising, it is important to keep in touch with these visitors, get them to register on your site and encourage repeat business. You can do this with a regular enewsletter, or printed material.

Promises are not always what they seem.
There are a lot of SEO companies who will claim to be able to guarantee you rankings. These claims can be false, and the tricks used could ultimately lead to your site listing being removed.

Some of these tricks include:
Misleading content:- The practice of hiding common search terms on web pages that are not relevant to your business or products will bring the wrong sort of visitors to your website.

Link Spoofing:- The practice of linking your site to other sites that have been created solely for the purpose of linking lots of other sites without any real purpose (Link farms mentioned above).

These and other practices are actively discouraged by the search engines and can seriously damage your ranking.


Whether it's IT support in Shropshire, a website in Herefordshire or Marketing assistance in Worcestershire, we can help.

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