Search optimisation
SEO - Search Engine Optimisation is the process of trying to improve the prominence of a web site on the search engines. The primary target is Google as that has by far the largest market share (estimates vary but in the range 50-80% with the nearest competitor below 20%).
We do not offer a separate SEO service. We believe that SEO is best delivered as an integral part of the web site design process. There are so many rogue SEO companies making wild promises and misleading claims that we would feel it could damage our reputation were we to enter that market.
It is worth us spending a few hours updating the SEO elements of any site more than a couple of years old to see if improvements could help Google index the site better. That's not what SEO companies offer, we won't promise the impossible, we won't try to "blind you with science" and we won't charge a small fortune.
Web page technology is still developing quickly so we advise an occasional technical review of your website too. At the very least check that it still works with more recent end-user setups (Newer web-browsers, wider screens). A small number of our clients sites are virtually unchanged after ten years and still working but they do not perform as well as would a more recent build. A realistic "life expectancy" for a website should be 3-5 years. When we are asked to make some updates to an older site we advise that rather than just fixing any immediate issues, we move it onto current web standards and use the opportunity to add features which we believe influence Google positioning.
Should you decide that you do want to use a specialist search optimisation company how can you tell whether they are effective? Why not try a search for "SEO" on Google, limit the search to UK and see if they are there. Then try again with a different search "Search engine optimisation". Can you find them? If they show up on neither what does that tell you about their ability to obtain "top ten listing" for you? Well now try another search, this time we'll use their exact company name, say "universal-seo.co.uk" (use the quotes as part of the search phrase). If that doesn't find them they are definitely complete charlatans.
There are a few more credibility tests we recommend:
- How did the SEO contact you? Unsolicited cold call on the telephone? Unsolicited email? What does that tell you about them?
- Did they provide a few "facts" about your search status? Convincing aren't they, this guy has put some effort in to his approach - or has he? There are programs to help deliver this kind of report, he's probably spent all of sixty seconds on the task, mostly to weed out anything in the report he'd rather you didn't see.
- If you are able to find their website, what does it tell you about them? Are they a registered limited company? Do they have a physical street address? Is it an office in a (local) business area, a house in a smart area, a council flat - or worst of all a PO Box number or located in another country (so that pursuing them for not fulfilling their promises is impractical)?
- And phone number - is that an identifiable land-line or just a mobile or 0800 number? Call the land-line, is it an answering service, an answerphone, a home number? (The background noises sometimes give clues.)
- Similarly their email address - is it a free email address from somewhere like hotmail or gmail or is it one using the same domain name as their web-site? (BAD: Gordon.Brown@gmail.com, GOOD: Mother.Teresa@universal-seo.co.uk). A professional company will be using their own domain name for their email addresses.
- What do they tell you about the actions they will take to improve your search position? It is common to focus on the results they hope to achieve but are they going to use what's known as "black hat SEO" to achieve that - techniques intended to deceive Google and which may now or in future lead to your site being blacklisted. Of course they will all give you a "no black-hat techniques" undertaking, what will they tell you about what the will do, the actions not the results. Some techniques are:
- "Link building" it is extremely difficult to get good quality, links from relevant sites so what is usually delivered by SEOs is links from sites of at best questionable relevance and quality and from obscure "links pages" buried deep in the site. You can do better yourself by cooperating with your suppliers, distributors, companies that sell consumables for your machine (e.g. you make sanding machines they make sandpaper strips), your representative trade body (if you are a builder then the Federation of Master Builders should offer links to their members). The easiest links to obtain are from "Link farms" - websites with nothing but links on them hoping to earn a few pennies from sponsored links. Often these are on web domains that were bought speculatively in the hope of selling the name for a large premium. Links from link farms are likely to damage your position on Google.
- "Directory submissions" There are many tens of thousands of web sites claiming to be search engines or internet directories, how many do you use? Most of us use just one or two search engines and rarely use a directory. There are a few moderately useful directories but they tend to be expensive (and there are plenty that are poor but expensive). You can expect your SEO to submit to the cheap/free ones - don't expect them to deliver extra visitors (but do expect more junk mail).
- "Link baiting" Add pages to your website that are designed to attract links from elsewhere. At best these are well written informative articles relevant to the subject of your website with no overt "sales" motivation. Worse is enticing material of little or no relevance (think "Pirelli Calendar" - the ladies featured rather more noticeably then the tyres). Worst is articles stuffed with keywords intended to "feed" the search engines but of no value to human readers.
- "Gateway pages" or "Doorway pages" - these are obsolete techniques that run a high risk of Google blacklisting, no SEO will mention the possibility, if they do: say goodbye!
- "We've got a secret technique, we know Google's page ranking formula" - No they don't! Google multi-billion dollar business relies on the secrecy of their ranking formula. If anyone was going to get access to it that might be expected to be a competitor like Microsoft.
- "Key word meta tags" - there are some tags in a web page which contain content not intended for users but to help the search engines. The best known is the keywords tag. It has been so widely abused that at best it accounts for a fraction of one percent of the value Google places on a page. You should use the keyword tag but there's little point spending a lot of time choosing the best words to use there as the effort will outweigh the tiny benefit.
- "Key phrases" it is useful to identify a few 2-4 word phrases people might put into a search engine if they want to find a particular page on your web site. You can then ensure these phrases appear at relevant places on the page. However over-use of the phrases becomes "keyword stuffing" and may have the opposite of the desired effect.
- Many SEOs offer a guarantee. The only guarantee I'd value is one where they state objectives and only invoice once those have been achieved.
- Get and take up references. Suppose they give you the web address of a site they've optimised; try to find it using Google do not use the search phrases the SEO suggests, try to act as if you were genuinely looking for the products or services the reference site provides. Do check on the reference sites to see if they may be related in some way to the SEO - get the company registration number, go to companies house website and check the ownership.
- By the way... Google do tell webmasters a bit about their system works: It assesses each page on over 200 different criteria, and does not allocate equal value to each. A recent announcement is that they have now started using the individual searcher's search history to try to target the results to suit the preferences of that individual. So If I search for "screwdriver" Google will decide whether my history indicates that I'm interested in tools or cocktails and give me accordingly targetted results.
- A developer with Google's personalized search team writes "up to one in five searches are tailored to the user's particular location, web history, or online contacts." That means that whetever the SEO does to "get your page to the top" may be overidden by factors in an individual searcher's profile. And google is trying to improve from one in 5 searches to all being tailored to the individual searcher. That doesn't totally invalidate SEO but it means that in an increasing number of circumstances they have no chance of consistent success.
So how do the SEO companies deliver on their claims to get you into the top ten on Google? One (of several equally questionable) techniques is to "help you to choose your search phrase". That means they find a phrase that looks credible for your business but for which there is little competition - vanishingly few actual searches use that phrase. I can probably demonstrate how your existing website comes "in the first page of Google results" by careful choice of the search phrase I use and knowing the content of the page I want to be shown in the results.
So is SEO a complete confidence trick? No. Over 50% of web sites lack the basic features Google likes to see. Most SEO companies can deliver results for those - but typical prices we've seen quoted are more than such a website should have cost in the first place.
Why not read what Google say about SEO. Here's an extract:
No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.
When we create a new web site we pay heed to the requirements of the search engines. It is possible to do even more but the law of diminishing returns applies, the first 10% of effort delivers 90% of the benefit. The cost of attempting to deliver the remaining 10% of benefit is the next 90% of work - that's to say it gets very expensive and requires continuing regular maintenance incurring yet more cost. If yours is a multi-national business with generous profits you can afford to spend tens of thousands of pounds a year on trying to maximise search positioning. German motor manufacturer BMW did that in 2006, their SEO used techniques Google considered unacceptable and blacklisted the site.
Our advice is not to get too obsessive about SEO, if you want to invest more in marketing the web site consider Google Adwords and don't forget that offline advertising that includes your web address is over ten times more effective than the same advert without a web link.