(PRWEB) May 27, 2004
A disturbing number of company websites are a waste of money, time and cyberspace, because they are not constructed in such a way as to be compatible with the major search engines that generate the majority of Internet traffic.
That’s the conclusion of Dr Michael Gray, managing director of one of Scotland’s top web designers Web Age, who can boast many tangible successes in securing top positions on search engine results pages for their clients.
Web Age are proven experts in the comparatively new field of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
SEO is the process of promoting a business and its products and services online in order to achieve better search engine rankings for relevant, targeted key phrases.
Search engine ranking is important for most businesses because more and more people are using the Internet in order to source suppliers of the goods and services that they require. And it is estimated that 85% of Internet customers use search engines and directories in order to facilitate their search.
This means that people keying in (for example) “office cleaning services Scotland” are probably predisposed to buying office cleaning services in Scotland, and are therefore, to use the salesman’s jargon, “qualified leads”.
But research also indicates that these potential customers will not look beyond the first one or two pages of search engine results.
Which makes it absolutely vital to second-guess the customer and correctly identify the key words and phrases that he or she is going to type into the search engine when looking for the goods or services that you have on offer, and for your website to attain the highest possible search engine results page listing for those key words or phrases.
These key words and phrases must then be incorporated into the title, meta tags and body copy of your website, and this begins the process of search engine optimisation. SEO can be described as the technique which optimises both the HTML (the code which translates the idea of your website into its physical embodiment on the Internet) and the content of the site for both search engines and visitors alike in order to achieve higher rankings. SEO will increase qualified traffic and generate customer enquiries that will ultimately convert into sales.
As Michael Gray points out, “The customer is already looking for your product or service by the time he hits your page. The important thing is to make sure he hits your page.”
It is estimated that as many as 70% of website owners are missing out on vital search engine traffic because their websites are not specifically designed in order to ensure a high ranking.
Having the best-looking site in the world will not help one bit, maintains Michael Gray. Search engines cannot judge appearance, and do not give points for artistic impression.
And the use of eye-catching popular animated gizmos based on products like Flash or JavaScript are similarly to all intents and purposes invisible to search engines, and can seriously and detrimentally affect the SEO process. As can elements contained within frames, and pages that enforce the acceptance of cookies.
And merely registering your website’s URL (address) with all the major search engines won’t give your pages a decent chance of getting on the vital first page of the search engine results pages. In fact, the opposite is true.
The Google / Yahoo combination commands almost 90% of the search engine market share. They employ robotic “spiders” or “crawlers” to investigate and rank websites. And websites that are submitted or registered are automatically given a lower ranking than those found by the search engines themselves.
And contrary to myth and any sales hype that you may read, there is no software available, nor will there ever be, that can automate the SEO process. There simply is no substitute for expert knowledge, experience and hard work.
One of the things that SEO experts like Web Age can do is to make sure that all your key words and phrases are incorporated both in your website’s metatag coding, and as free-flowing text that will be interesting to your customers on your web pages themselves.
And another important consideration is the number and quality of the “links” from your website to others on similar or related subjects.
The whole principal of the worldwide web is that pages link to other pages offering relevant information on the same or related topics.
So when the Google search engine spider looks at a website, it not only scores the pages on their own content and quality, but also places a high importance on both the number of pages that link to it, and the quality of those pages.
And Google will not include a page on its database in the first place unless it contains in it at least one link to another page already on its database.
In conclusion, each page on your website must be content-rich, search engine-friendly, and be easily found by potential customers using relevant search terms. Search engine optimisation can achieve this.
As Michael Gray points out, “Right now, your website’s low search engine ranking could be costing you many times more than the price of search engine optimisation. SEO is initially a self-liquidating, and then a profit-maximising investment.”
Web links:
http://www.webage.co.uk
http://www.famepublicity.co.uk
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:CO0beP0OQm8J:http://www.pr-scotland.com/releases/040524-01.htm+disturbing+number+company+websites+waste+money+time+cyberspace&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://www.pressbox.co.uk/Detailed/14849.html
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/6/prwebxml132644.php
Issued on behalf of Web Age by Fame Publicity Services. Contact Murdoch MacDonald +44 (0)1292 281498.
Dr Michael Gray
Managing Director
Web Age
The Walled Garden
Cushats
AYR, Ayrshire
Scotland
KA7 2AY
Telephone: +44 (0)1292 571460
Fax: +44 (0)1292 571609
E-mail: info@webage.co.uk
Web: http://www.webage.co.uk
Murdoch MacDonald
Fame Publicity Services
10 Miller Road
AYR, Ayrshire
Scotland
KA7 2AY
Telephone: +44 (0)1292 281498
E-mail: famepublicity@aol.com
Web: http://www.famepublicity.co.uk
Find More JavaScript Press Releases
A disturbing number of company websites are a waste of money, time and cyberspace
No comments:
Post a Comment