Why is SEO important?
Being seen in the search results, with the best possible page rank, is obviously important for most website owners. The process of optimising a site to give it the best chance of a good ranking is called SEO. There are some basic, simple things that can be done but it is a big subject and at its highest level it is the domain of specialised consultants. What’s more, search engines, and Google in particular, are constantly changing their algorithms – the software that controls their parameters when evaluating a site. SEO is a complex area.
There are many things that can be done as part of a site’s initial development to encourage good search ranking, but SEO should also be part of the continuing management of a website. At Longbow we make every effort to follow best SEO practice when creating a site and we offer ongoing SEO as part of our maintenance packages.
SEO types
There are two types of SEO: On-page and off-page.
On-page SEO
This is the process of developing page content that search engines—in most cases Google—will see and consider valuable. The most obvious is text. To put it simply, a page about windsurfing will not get found if it does not contain that word. Windsurfing is thus a ‘keyword’ for that page, and it needs to appear in various key locations to be most effective.
There are numerous other factors and there are whole websites dedicated to the subject.
More about keywords
Keywords are the words and phrases in a web page that make it possible for people to find it via search engines. Obviously, that makes them a vital factor in a site’s SEO performance. Developing a list of keywords must therefore be one of the first steps in any SEO programme. Not only do they need to be relevant to the page, but they also need to be ones that people are actually looking for. Once a keyword list has been agreed, they must then be placed at appropriate locations on the site. It is then possible to analyse pages to find out how they perform on search engines with those keywords.
Longbow is happy to help clients with keywords, but the work has to start with clients as they know best which words and phrases are relevant for their goods or services.
Off-page SEO
In addition to the text content of pages, Google also judges a site by its popularity with other websites. It does so by looking for links from other sites – ‘backlinks’, or incoming links. The more backlinks there are to a site, the more that site is considered valuable by Google. It is important that backlinks are genuine and come from what Google considers to be a good quality source.
Conversely, it is possible for a site to be targeted by disreputable sites and it is important to be on the lookout for these and make sure that Google ignores them.
Longbow’s maintenance packages help take the worry out of SEO to ensure your website always performs as it should.