Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation - Frequently Asked Questions

Getting information about Search Engine Optimisation can be quite confusing and frustrating. We have provided our website visitors with a lot of rich information throughout our website. This page was created to respond to questions that are commonly asked, especially by those in the early stages of understanding the field of SEO.

General SEO Questions:

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
What good is having a web site if it is not being seen?
Why doesn't my Web site rank very well in the search engines?
How does the Search Engine find websites?
How long does it take for SEO results to kick in?
What is my site ranking dependent on?
Why might I need to have extra elements added to my website?
If these elements are so important, why didn't they get added when my site was originally designed?
Does every page of my website really need to be optimised?
Isn't This Something We Can Do Ourselves?
Can you guarantee a number #1 position in the search engines?
It's been several months and my website finally shows up in Google but it's ranked in the hundreds. Why is that?
My website did not get accepted last time I submitted to the search engines... why?
Why Should I Choose Strategy Consulting?
How Do Strategy Consulting Choose the Best Keywords?
Will You Need to Access Our Web Server?
Do You Have to Make Changes to Our Site?
I found other services that do what you do much more cheaply: how do I choose?
What should I look for when choosing a SEO consultant?
What's the right time for me to start a search engine marketing campaign and how long will it last?
How often will I receive search engine ranking reports
How often do you resubmit my site to search engines?
How will I know if my business increases as a result of top rankings?
All this is very confusing and I still have some questions about your services.

Technical SEO Questions:

What is a Search Engine?
What is a Directory?
What are Spiders, Crawlers and Robots?
What's the difference between Search Engine Optimisation and Pay-Per-Click methods?
Will using dynamic pages harm my rankings?
Do filenames and directory structure matter?
What is a "reciprocal link"?
What are "inbound links" and how important are they?
How can I find how many inbound links I have?
What is link popularity?
How do you increase my site's link popularity?
What is "PageRank (PR)"?
Is it OK to use Flash?
How does Strategy Consulting keep up with what search engines are looking for?
What is cloaking? Does Strategy Consulting use this technique?
How can I contact you?

1. What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of preparing a website in order to achieve search engine rankings that drive traffic to your site. SEO is an ongoing process beginning with the initial optimisation of the site, monthly maintenance of the site, regular evaluation of search results and adjustments to the site.

2. What good is having a web site if it is not being seen?

90% of Internet buyers are turning to search engines to find the products they want. Google alone conducts over 150 million searches a day. In fact, recent studies show that purchasers are about 12 times more likely to buy your products or services after finding your site through a search engine than all other traditional advertising methods combined (including trade shows, print ads, direct mail, radio, and even television)... at a fraction of the cost! Why? Simply put, when a consumer finds you through a search engine they are ready to buy. With traditional forms of media, you are broadcasting a message hoping to reach the right consumer at the right time.

As searchers generally only explore the first two pages in the search results, achieving high rankings on the search engines will make an enormous difference in the amount of visitor traffic your site receives.

3. Why doesn't my Web site rank very well in the search engines?

Having your web site rank high in the search engines is a science and the rules for search engine optimisation (SEO) are always changing.

Here are some reasons why you may be having poor ranking:

Incorrect usage of the TITLE tag or no TITLE tag content.
Too many occurrences of the same word in a page (spamming).
Missing H1 and H2 heading tag content.
Missing ALT tag content in your graphic links.
No meaningful content in the first 250 characters on each page.
Less than 200 words per page.
Very few pages on your website.
No links from other websites to your website (link popularity).

4. How does the Search Engine find websites?

There are two ways a search engine can find a website to add to its database. The first and most direct method is to accept submissions from website designers and optimisers. Most search engines have a "submit your URL" section inviting submissions from Internet users.

The second, and least obvious method of finding websites is to send a "spider" to follow each and every link on, off, and through a website. New URLs encountered by the spider will be added to the database. In this way, some search engines will grow very rapidly.

5. How long does it take for SEO results to kick in?

The amount of time required to see results of search engine optimisation work range anywhere from 2 weeks to a few months. This is dependent on how often search engines update their index and subsequently re-rank sites. The Google Dance for example is almost a spectator sport among the SEO community.

6. What is my site ranking dependent on?

Site ranking tends to be "cumulative" and is dependent on the following factors:

The specific keyword phrases (search terms) that have been targeted
The overall competitiveness of your industry - how many players are there
Whether you are targeting a regional, national, or international market
How well ranking is monitored and the site tweaked over time for SEO improvement
The progress of your inbound linking campaign
Number of competitor sites achieving new ranking themselves.

7. Why might I need to have extra elements added to my website?

A search engine spider is an automated program that electronically probes every URL submitted to its database. As the spider is a computer program, it is designed to look for and rank very specific items on each page it probes. If those elements are present, the spider computes a higher ranking than it would if those elements were not present.

8. If these elements are so important, why didn't they get added when my site was originally designed?

Most website designers haven't learned the importance of search engine friendly design. In almost every case we've encountered, the site designer is a highly skilled and creative person whose job is to put your ideas on the web. More often than not, the designers have not received any training in search engine optimisation and don't think about it while pursuing a cool looking design.

Search engines are also constantly changing their ranking criteria. They do this to prevent gross manipulation of their search tools. Often, website designers are not fully up to date with changes at search engines.

Strategy Consulting are happy to work with designers at the beginning of the web design process or we can make every effort to maintain the desired elements of an existing site while converting & introducing new elements to make the site search engine friendly.

9. Does every page of my website really need to be optimised?

In a word - yes. Every page of a website can be a potential entry point or ‘landing page’ for visitors. You can't predict which page or pages will be ranked the best for specific keywords. As such, each page must be individually optimised too for optimal ranking. Collectively, all pages of your website reinforce the common "theme" of the site, which also can help boost ranking. Don't assume that your home page is the only important page on your site.

10. Isn't This Something We Can Do Ourselves?

Large amounts of time, attention and expertise are needed to achieve the desired results in such a constantly changing niche industry. The expense of adding personnel and necessary resources alone would quickly outweigh the cost of hiring our company, which is why outsourcing SEO is by far the most popular method. Remember, Strategy Consulting has already established strong, ongoing relationships with all the top search engines, and has experience professionals who are constantly researching the changes and trends in this dynamic field.

11. Can you guarantee a number #1 position in the search engines?

Nobody can guarantee a number #1 position or specific ranking for your site for a given keyword phrase in the organic search engine results. There are simply too many factors beyond anyone's control - the search engines changing their ranking algorithms, efforts made by competitors, and new sites being added to the Web.

Obtaining a specific ranking is analogous to managing a portfolio. Your financial advisor will do their best to monitor the stock market and other indicators and to make sure your portfolio is managed to the best of their abilities. However, your advisor cannot guarantee that your portfolio will be at a specific value or even that the amount will be up at all by a given date.

12. It's been several months and my website finally shows up in Google but it's ranked in the hundreds. Why is that?

It's not always easy to get better search engine rankings. In fact, search engine optimisation is part science and part art. Search engines continually change their algorithms and tweak their rules for ranking. It is possible that Google does not fully read your page due to structural issues, your website (or at least individual web pages) could be lacking in meaningful content, no significant websites link to you, your website is too small to be of any value to people searching for your topic, or any other range of problems.

Search engines may be flooded with websites on a given topic, making it more difficult to achieve higher rankings. As such, a good search engine optimiser will look for a niche to exploit. For example, consider whether your website has greater appeal to a local, national, or international region.

13. My website did not get accepted last time I submitted to the search engines... why?

Search Engine listings are not guaranteed to everyone who posts a website to the Internet. Search engines are for-profit businesses and have the right to refuse to list any site for virtually any reason. Strategy Consulting specialise in getting sites listed on Search Engines. We ensure all bases are covered and all necessary elements are present before submitting the finalised site to the search engines or directories.

14. Why Should I Choose Strategy Consulting?

To achieve a high ranking web site, you have to know exactly the most effective META tag design formula, best web copywriting techniques, keep track of current search engine ranking algorithms, know what format to submit the site in to every engine and how often to resubmit the site. You also need to know whether your site is technically compatible with search engine robots, what types of pages the engines will accept and which will be barriers to ranking, plus what sort of overall “relevancy score” your site will receive from each engine you submit to.

Not only that, but once you're ranking highly, you have to monitor your progress and adjust your tags every now and then to ensure you stay up above your competitors on all engines for your major search phrases. These are all crucial steps to a high ranking, but very time consuming and not your core business!

Strategy Consulting are specialists in the area of search engine marketing, whose full-time role is to place our clients high in the search engines and keep them there. Our consultants have developed and streamlined a unique and ethical search optimisation formula that has resulted in very impressive rankings for our clients on international and regional search engines.

Other SEO companies may simply use software programs to do the work for them, with little understanding or concern for the work itself. We believe that personal knowledge and experience are far more important. Software applications are a good tool, but they are just one ingredient to a much larger recipe. Additionally, Strategy Consulting will provide an unparalleled degree of personalised service. Your representative will speak directly to, and work closely with, our SEO specialists assigned to your site. Our professionals take a lot of pride in the work that they do, and we take the time to understand your business, your competition, and your buyer's searching habits.

15. How Do Strategy Consulting Choose the Best Keywords?

The first step in our SEO campaign is to develop your Keyword Profile. Based on your initial input, we will use a combination of experience and software programs to generate a list of the most effective and well-searched keywords in your industry. We then work together to refine this list and compile the list of keywords and phrases that will be most beneficial to your product or services. You know your business and we know ours. We know how important it is to work together to generate the most effective Keyword Profile possible.

16. Will You Need to Access Our Web Server?

Yes, we will need access to your web server in order to upload and periodically update pages. We do our best to keep you informed every time we do an upload or make a change. It is vital that anyone else who may be making changes to your site stays current with the optimised pages we provide.

17. Do You Have to Make Changes to Our Site?

While many of the changes made to your site are done behind the scenes in the source code, it may be necessary to make certain minor changes to your site's copy or layout. In most cases, these changes are minimal. We post all changes made to the front end of your site to our test server for your approval before we go live with the changes.

18. I found other services that do what you do much more cheaply: how do I choose?

Some companies take advantage of the uninitiated website owner promising top rankings for £9.95 or something similar. Beware of such promises - if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. That £9.95 will typically buy an automated submission to 10,000 "engines" that nobody ever visits or possibly even result in a domain ban for over submitting. Once the £9.95 campaign is finished, so is your domain. There is no such thing as #1 rankings in all search engines or "it only takes 2 weeks and £9.95".

More importantly, most of these services only include submission, not optimisation, as a part of their deal. Submitting an un-optimised site to the engines simply will not improve your rankings. If you don't plan on optimising your site before submission then you shouldn't bother submitting it at all.

19. What should I look for when choosing a SEO consultant?

The ideal Consultant is one that understands the dynamics of marketing, business, and technology - and employs the highest levels of integrity in their work. There are a number of unethical practices or shortcuts that can be used in search engine optimisation, but the search engines themselves often times will not accept these questionable or "tricky" practices.

You should choose a company that doesn't promote these practices to achieve short-term results for its clients. You should also expect to benefit from the research expertise, customised approached, management expertise, and on-going consultative process from a SEO firm.

20. What's the right time for me to start a search engine marketing campaign and how long it last?

No time like the present! We usually establish 12-month campaigns. There is an enormous amount of education, research, analysis, technical programming, and testing performed in the first 3 months in particular.

21. How often will I receive search engine ranking reports?

We send out search engine ranking reports monthly to our clients.

22. How often do you resubmit my site to search engines?

If your site is search engine compatible and optimised correctly, regular resubmission to engines is generally unnecessary although we find that monthly submissions to some search engines assists in maintaining rankings. Our ranking reports and maintenance checks keep track of your site every four weeks. If your site is already ranking highly, there is no need to resubmit it. However if any engines have lowered or dropped your site altogether (as can happen from time to time), it will be resubmitted to those engines.

If an engine has dropped your rankings considerably since last report, it is time to tweak your META tags or check the optimised pages for any problems. This is included as part of your Monthly Site Ranking Management Service. Search engines will generally pick up the changes during their next edit and re-rank the site accordingly. Resubmission is usually only necessary if your site has undergone major content changes.

23. How will I know if my business increases as a result of top rankings?

There are numerous Web Analytics tools available in the market that can help you to track the effectiveness of your campaign. By the end of the first twelve months, you will get an analysis of your activity at the end of the campaign as compared to the baseline established at the beginning of the campaign.

24. All this is very confusing and I still have some questions about your services.

You are invited to contact us with your concerns before, during and after the campaign. Clients always get priority handling: we are here to help you get better rankings and understand what we do.

Click here for help in getting top search engine rankings.

Technical SEO Questions:

1. What is a Search Engine?

A search engine is an online database of websites that allows Internet users to search for information contained on websites that are contained in the database by "Keywords".

Keywords are words that Internet searches are likely to use when looking for information on a specific topic. For example, the words "universities" would likely be used when looking for information on continuing post-secondary education. Each search engine has slightly different behaviours and characteristics.

2. What is a Directory?

A directory is a search tool much like a search engine but with a few major differences. Directories tend to employ human editors to review and rank websites submitted to their database. Yahoo! is the most well known example of a directory. Most directories catalogue websites based on a variety of topic categories such as Business and Economics, or Arts and Culture. Many directories demand payment before assigning a website review to one of their editors others are free.

3. What are Spiders, Crawlers and Robots?

Search engines work by sending out what are called spiders, crawlers, or robots. Essentially, they crawl through cyberspace looking for web pages. When they get to a page, they take a sort of picture of the page, indexing the information on it, and integrating it into their giant database of millions of websites.

When you type a keyword into the search engines looking for websites with content on that topic, in a split second they go through billions of web pages that the spiders and robots have visited. Web pages are typically revisited every few weeks.

4. What's the difference between Search Engine Optimisation and Pay-Per-Click methods?

Search Engine Optimisation is a long, carefully planned and executed method for generating more visits to a website. It involves maximising your website's structure, content, code, and links. When done properly, various pages within a website bubble up to the top of the search engine results pages (frequently called "SERPs"). Ideally a top 10 placement will be achieved.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (frequently called "PPC") is a form of marketing that involves paying for each visitor to your site. It typically begins at about 10p per visitor but can go up to several pounds. This gets visitors to a website instantly, not over time as in organic optimisation.

The two most popular PPC methods involve placing ads with Google's Adword program and Yahoo's Overture program. In the long run, when Organic Search Engine Optimisation is done properly it is much cheaper and can be more effective, although these two approaches can be used together as part of a larger marketing campaign.

5. Will using dynamic pages harm my rankings?

If the pages are in .php or .asp extensions they wont harm your ranking. Spiders find very difficult to crawl by link having query strings e.g., "test.asp?param1=yes&param2=no", such urls might get dropped by spiders for crawling. It is better to create straightforward .php or Asp links.

6. Do filenames and directory structure matter?

Yes, it does matter. Put your keyword in your filename which will give little push in ranking. The filename should also be no longer then 15-20 characters. If you have vast amount of data and need to organise it in different directories please add at least one keyword within the name. Try to be close to home page with specific file and directory name. Though many search engines does not take this as part of their algorithm criteria.

7. What is a "reciprocal link"?

A link from your site to another site and vice versa is called reciprocal link.

8. What are "inbound links" and how important are they?

Inbound links are nothing more than links coming to a given website from an external website. For example, any links on this website to Google.com are considered to be inbound links to Google.

Over the past 2 years or so, search engines have placed a lot of importance on inbound links. Inbound links are a good way to judge the popularity of a website i.e. the more inbound links a website has, the more important it is considered to be. Many people use words that describe a website in order to link to it, so the words used to the link have become very important. Ideally, all of the inbound links to your website should use your target keywords as the link text.

9. How can I find how many inbound links I have?

In reality there is no real way to calculate the exact number of inbound links in. The best way to find inbound links to your website is to use either Google or AllTheWeb / FAST. With Google, it is possible to search for inbound links by using the search query "link:www.example.com", this will search for all links to the site www.example.com. On AllTheWeb, you can check for inbound links to a site by using "link.all:www.example.com".

10. What is link popularity?

Link popularity is a measure of how many other sites contain a hyper link to your site. Some search engines, most notably Google, use link popularity as one of their most important criteria in determining page rank. A further component of link popularity is the quality of sites linking to yours. A link to your site from Yahoo! web site will be regarded as more important than a link from your friend's Wedding web site that's hosted on a free server.

11. How do you increase my site's link popularity?

You might think that logic dictates that you can increase link popularity by undertaking an effort to get as many links to your site as possible. However, search engines, in their constant efforts to produce the most relevant results, are aware of and penalise for such tactics. Having links to your site from "link farms" or "free-for-alls" can actually be damaging.

There are valid and effective ways of increasing link popularity. The process begins in your own backyard - proper optimisation involves maximisation of the internal linking structure of your site, having keyword-rich link text, and increasing the number of relevant outbound links. From there, Strategy Consulting builds upon this internal strength to focus our efforts on establishment and cultivation of valuable external linking relationships.

12. What is "PageRank (PR)"?

PageRank™ is actually a trademarked term. The trademark belongs to Google Inc. and refers to the "rank" of a website as determined by Google's ranking system. Page Rank is a grade given to a webpage determining the importance in Google's sense. If you have a high rank website, your chances are higher to come on first position as high page rank boost your search result. Page rank is calculated by the inbound link the page is getting.

13. Is it OK to use Flash?

As with JavaScript, it is too difficult to parse. Some sites use Flash introductions with a skip button. Page with flash intros greatly reduce their rankings and are encouraged to stop using intros. Sites that use Flash for navigation's and interaction etc. are encouraged to use HTML navigation instead and HTML text where possible.

14. How does Strategy Consulting keep up with what search engines are looking for?

Strategy Consulting is comprised of professionals dedicated to the research, technology and innovation required to stay on the cutting edge of search engine trends. We are constantly studying each search engine's rules, regulations, behaviour and process timing.

15. What is cloaking? Does Strategy Consulting use this technique?

Cloaking is the technique of delivering a particular Web page to a search engine, while serving a completely different Web page to the end user. Search engines commonly overlook - and in some cases even ban - web sites that employ this practice. We are aware of the search engines' views on cloaking and therefore does not employ this unethical technique.

16. How can I contact you?

Click here to contact us or call us on 0845 8380936 for a FREE Consultation.

Listen to Kath Dawson's podcast on introduction to search engine optimisation which covers the basics of what SEO is, how you can learn to do-it-yourself and why sometimes it can help to use an SEO specialist if you do not have the time or experience to make your web site work for you and bring you traffic.

KATHRYN DAWSON MBA, is Marketing Director of Strategy Consulting Limited and runs the search engine optimisation department.

(This podcast was recorded recently for expertsonline.tv)

To find out more about Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click advertising visit the following links:

Tel:	0845 8380936
Email:	info@strategyconsultinglimited.co.uk
Fax:	0870 1369549

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation - Frequently Asked Questions

General SEO Questions:

Technical SEO Questions:

Technical SEO Questions:

Contact us today for a FREE 30 minute SEO consultation. Get our advice on the best way to spend your online marketing budget.

Contact us today for a FREE 30 minute SEO consultation.

Get our advice on the best way to spend your online marketing budget.