Optimising your small business website
The goal with this work is for us to get your website ranked highly in search engine results pages on the 'organic' links in the middle of the page; the reason this is so important is that over 70% of web traffic comes from the organic search results (the remaining 30% or so is through pay-per-click advertising on the page, you can read about that on our internet marketing page). The main problem about not being on that elusive first page is that search users very rarely venture beyond the first, or at best second page of results, instead, choosing to change their search to something else. So just how can qclGroup get you that first page listing....
Choosing the right search terms
The holy grail of optimisation is of course the top spot in google - it's always our aim when we're either optimising a site we've built for a client or a site that a client brings to us, but you've got to be realistic... these are the words that people will type into a search engine which will return your site in the results. We'll work with you to choose search terms that are right for your site - choose 'computers' and you're going to need a very very deep wallet; go for 'computer shops in my town' and you'll be lucky to get a few hits a month, but be realistic and go for something like 'computer shops in my region' and there's a good chance of a high ranking for a very reasonable cost.
On site optimisation
This is where we make your site 'readable' by both search engines and people - and it's not as easy as it sounds. The search engines are looking at your site in a different way to your human visitors and understanding how they work is how we achieve results, whilst still making your site nice and informative for your customers. The key is in getting the right words in the right places and making your site comply with 'web standards'(click the link at the bottom left of this page to see what we mean). Unlike many other web design companies, we don't just give you a site and let you fill in the words, we'll work with you to make sure that you achieve the results you need.
Off-site optimisation
Just getting the wording right on your site will work well for 'easy' search terms, but they often don't get the traffic you need. To build on the on-site optimisation, we will also begin building links back to your page from relevant, good quality sites - this makes the search engines 'rate' your site more and hence improves your search position. Exactly how we do this is a bit too detailed to go into here, but it's probably the most important aspect of optimising your website for searching. One thing we will say though, is that we never use 'unethical' methods to improve your search ranking - if we did, we could get you to the top very quickly, but the long term results are poor, often leading to your website being struck off the listings altogether. Many companies do it though, so be cautious of anyone offering 'guaranteed' results - there are no guarantees in SEO, because no one truly knows how the search engines work.
We always offer at least basic SEO with all of our websites, but whatever you need, please get in touch and we'll work with you to develop a strategy for your site.
