search engine optimisation
Build your brand
Many SEO search engine optimisation companies are paid a lot of money to get their clients highly ranked in search engine results pages which proves just how valuable it can be to appear on page one of Google for example. We are not in competition with SEO companies, in fact we use one called Just Search to keep us on page 1 of Google for the search phrase ‘logo design’. With the use of the internet for research, entertainment and shopping increasing exponentially and the fact that most sites are accessed via search engines it is little wonder that a page one listing has become the Holy Grail of the 21st century. But, be warned, if your business or service relies solely or heavily on being found on the major search engines you are extremely vulnerable: when Google refines its algorithms – and this appears to be a continual process – your precious page rank can disappear overnight and you may not be able to work out why and you will certainly have no redress. This does not mean that you cannot build a strong and resilient business using the web but if you – or your SEO company – are relying on the latest SEO trends and tricks to gain high page ranking you run the risk of vanishing deep down the listings into the darkness bellow page two!
Don’t cheat!
There are several things which website designers and developers can do to help towards achieving a good position and there are several things site owners can and should do to get their site noticed and well ranked. This has got nothing to do with blasting your site to over 10,000 search engines and directories’ programmes nor is it about the so called ‘dark art’ techniques that are used to unfairly gain a high placing by nefarious means. Search engines are brilliant, we all use them all the time and they deliver extremely well organised search results at lightning speed doing their best to answer our often woolly-worded questions. Larry Page one of Google’s co-founders describes a search engine as a thing that "understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want." We are all becoming increasingly sophisticated in our searches and in the way we sort through the results. We don’t want to ‘Buy cheap periodic tables’ from Ebay and we don’t want to be diverted to yet another listing of websites in a directory which has probably been set up as part of a link building programme (more cheating).
Be interesting
We all want quality results and yet everyone wants their own site to appear top of the list no matter what the subject! We can’t have it both ways so let’s play fair and help the search engines do their job by giving them what they are looking for. What they are looking for is content which is relevant to a particular search word or phrase. And relevant content is usually content which is focussed, rich, detailed and comprehensive. If it has authority or popularity or is recognised as useful it will be talked about elsewhere on the web and that is the way genuine in-bound links build up over time. So we all have a responsibility to make our websites interesting in one way or another otherwise we deserve to be ignored like wall flowers at a party.
Be topical
If your website never changes from one month to the next, the robots will get bored of it and label you accordingly: you will drop down the ranks. With content management systems you can take control over all or part of the contents of your site and then the onus is on you to keep it fresh and up to date. If you haven’t got time get someone else to do it for you. Otherwise you are going to slowly but surely sink into a mire of invisibility. There is always something happening, share your news: real, topical news and make damn sure you keep the stories flowing as there is nothing which shouts ‘I don’t care about this site or its visitors’ more than a news story months out of date at the top of the pile.
Join the conversation
Instead of seeking phoney links through spurious link building programmes why not get out there on the web and meet other people who are interested and involved in what you do and talk to them on their blogs, in their forums and interest groups? You are likely to pick up a lot of interesting information and, if you are interesting/informative/funny people will be interested in you and they will visit your website and if it too is interesting/informative/funny they will tell other people about it. Social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and Twitter (make links) can be great places to involve very wide, diverse groups of like minded people but most serious sites can be far more targeted in their approach and seek out the, often highly specialised, areas of the web which concern their own area of interest. By joining web based interest groups and online discussion forums you will not only be seen but you will be able to interact with some of the top movers and shakers in your field. You will undoubtedly be stimulated, learn a lot, hopefully give a bit back and that can’t be at all bad can it?
Be seen
It goes without saying – or does it? – that website developers and designers should build the coding of websites in a way that search engine robots can actually understand the contents. When robots spider a site they cannot understand text which is trapped in programmes like Flash – it’s invisible to them. They can’t see what images are showing unless you put a tag or caption to describe it. They can only read text and text is only robot-readable text if your cursor changes to a vertical ‘I’ when hovering over the words (unless they are linked words of course). Too many websites which look beautiful to us are invisible to search engines and consequently they never appear in search engine listings. This doesn’t mean that websites need to be dull and pedestrian, additional parallel pages in HTML text and accessed via am XML site map will enable your site to be crawled and indexed accordingly.
Code of conduct
Again it should go without saying that the meta information is carefully constructed and not just the keywords. The title and description of a page will be displayed in search results and people will read this to check your site’s relevance before they click through to it (or not!). In your browser click on View and then Source or Page Source to see the code for whichever page is being displayed. Towards the top of all that gobbledegook you will find your meta tags, check out searchenginewatch.com for information about meta tags and other technical aspects of search engine friendly website design.
The marketing mix
At the end of the day it’s all about marketing and marketing is all about people: the way they behave and the way they react. Effective marketing strategies usually employ a mix of media and messages that are carefully tuned to well defined audiences. The world wide web is but one of many communication channels and it is growing, evolving and becoming more complex and more sophisticated at an ever accelerating pace. Take a look a some of the diverse companies we work with in a variety of media in our showcase. We aim to forge long term relationships with our clients and to work with them to maximise their success. Logo Design & Marketing is a full service agency which means that we bring far more to the feast than search engine optimisation or even website design and development (internal link). We create images – photographic, illustrative, static or animated – we write copy, we create logos and brand identities and much more besides. We are intelligent, interesting and dynamic… could it be that the web is catching up with us at last?
www.seomoz.org is one of many SEO company sites which is full of interesting information and free tools to analyse and optimise your website.
If you search for logo design or graphic design or brand design in Google UK, we are on the first page of their listings. In fact, for logo design, we are usually first or second after the sponsored links.
