Search Engine Optimisation / Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Obtaining listings, but more importantly high listings, on the major engines
relies on either a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy
put in place or through a more expensive Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising route. This page summerises these two areas.
In many of today's business marketing plans, search engine placement is usually
high on the list (if the business model fits). Therefore, knowing how to achieve
placement is important. onemanwebdesign has the experience of offering this service.
To list your website in the main search engine results (the 'organic list') then
various tasks (listed below for Google) need completion with the target of getting
the engines to, basically, consider that your site is worthy to
list. Gaining top rankings in the organic list is the holy grail.
Ideally, SEO work should be planned & implemented during your website
build principle/process.
This is because some of the optimisation requires technical
architectural considerations.
But if you already have a site, work can still be performed.
onemanwebdesign considers the SEO tasks can be categorised as 'on-site'
& 'off-site'
:
'On-site' work relates to the
technical and structural optimisation
work on your site. This includes:
- the creation of interesting & up-to-date, topical site content which
people would be 'naturally' interested in. This could be current news & views contained within a blog. This 'interest' is then transferred in them placing a link from their
website to yours;
-
strategic placement of relevant keywords
& keyphrases in your page (including placement
in the code behind HTML
(e.g. the TITLE,
A,
H1,
ALT and META
tags);
- keywords within a domain name e.g. www.onemanWEBDESIGN.com;
- creation of a sitemap which shows (but
more importantly links to) all your website pages;
- ensuring the code behind is lightweight (following
compliance and accessibility
guidelines is always good);
- using text-based
navigation (rather than using images or Flash);
- Flash and images can be used. However, never waste important content/keywords in Flash or images
because the engines cannot register them;
- static sites are better
ideal for the engines. However, dynamic websites have a place and can still
be search-engine-friendly. One aspect is to ensure web folders & page filenames
contain keywords (and non-nonsensical querystrings). This can usually be solved with URL-rewriting;
- the longer your domain has been around, the better.
Everything else in the SEO workload is considered 'off-site', which includes:
- site promotion (link building) with other [relevant] websites;
- continually
monitoring rankings to access effectiveness;
- submission to the search engines
and directories;
- an initial, then on-going, research on keywords & keyphrases
appropriate for your business.
onemanwebdesign can help in achieving these objectives.
contact me 
for more information.
'Pay-Per-Click' (PPC) can be a cost-effective way to generate traffic quickly to your website.
You effectively 'bid' on the your important keywords which you think your target
audience would type into a search engine when looking for your product/service.
If your bid is successful for that keyword, then your advert is displayed for that
all-important click-thru to your website (which you then pay for). Monitoring and
adjusting keyword effectiveness and the costs of keywords & keyphrases is an
on-going process to obtain the best vfm.
The major PPC advertising places are: