Search Engine Optimisation (S.E.O.)
S.E.O. is also vitally important. Many people will make out like this is some form of black magic that no-one else knows how to do. It is quite amazing how much good free advice is out there though, and from time to time companies such as Google offer free seminars to business seeking to improve their online presence.
In very basic terms what it comes down to is this:
- Have good, relevant, well written content on your pages. Use words that people are likely to search for in the first paragraphs of your pages. The MOST IMPORTANT THING is to identify what people will be searching for and give them what they need.
- Use detailed and unique page titles (the TITLE tag).
- Use good descriptions in your DESCRIPTION meta tag.
- Forget about the KEYWORDS meta tag - no Search Engines use it because it is prone to abuse (irrelevant keywords used to get listings).
- Have your most relevant content as close to the top of the page as possible and avoid putting unecessary code before the real information.
- Use DIV tag positioning to help put relevant info at the top.
- Do not use navigation menus that are constructed using javascript or hold the menu links in a seperate file.
- Keep adding new content - old pages drop off the ranking and Search Engines like new content. Video content in particular can pop up near the top.
- Create or influence others to create as many inbound links as possible to your website. This includes using social networking and other services that might list your business online.
- Use a good tracking service such as Google Analytics to track ho your site is being used, what results your are getting, where from and why. It can be very informative!
After that (the free stuff) you can utilise Google's AdWords to buy advertising that is displayed to relevant matched searches. It has very detailed and specific setups to allow for your budget, maximum "bid" allowances, maximum spend etc.
