SEARCH ENGINES

Search engines allow people to search for information based on keywords which they enter into the search engine. The results from a search engine are web pages containing a list of links to webpages with a description of the webpage under each link. The links are ordered in relevance to the keywords entered by the person using the search engine, the most relevant at the top, down to the least relevant at the bottom of the list.
The relevance of your site to a particular keyword is based on a set of rules which are different for each search engine. Statistically most people type in 2-3 words when searching in order to reduce the number of non-relevant results. And most people don't look past the first 30 results of a search. If you search the web regularly you will probably be familiar with this behaviour.
In order to show up in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP's) you must submit your websites details to each of the major search engines in the first instant. We will submit your site for you, we submit your site to only 5 out of the thousands of search engines. The reason for this is that non-major search engines receive very little traffic and use the major search engines database of websites to obtain their results anyway. The major search engines are currently: Google AllTheWeb Hotbot/Lycos Netscape and Gigablast.
Since most people only look at the first 30 results of a search, and in many cases don't even look past the first pages worth, it is important that your website in ranked highly in searches for keywords relevant to your sites content. The higher your webpage is ranked when a person enters keywords relevant to your website the greater the chance they will click on the link to your website. Getting ranked high on a search engine is a marketing issue of great importance.
Since visitors from search engines makes up 90% of your potential customers, this is where we concentrate our marketing efforts for any website. By targeting particular keywords that are relevant to your website, you are ensured a lot of visitors that are all interested in what your website has to offer.
We have a developed a technique (perfectly legal and ethical, unlike some Search Engine Optimisation techniques) that allows your website to obtain a high place in the search engine results for a particular combination of keywords (a phrase) for the major search engines.
Most SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) companies use short-term optimisation techniques that give a boost in the SERP's. Since the rules the search engines use to rank websites changes on a regular basis, the technique that gains the highest ranking in the SERP's changes every time the search engines rules are changed. Short term optimisation techniques are effective, but very costly.
Since the rules the search engines use change often so do the techniques used to "exploit" those changes, so the cost of short term optimisation is re-occuring. Each search engine also uses a different set of rules to rank the websites in its database, so short term optimisation only works for one search engine, usually targeted is the search engine that receives the most traffic. A webpage can never be optimised in the short term for more than one search engine.
Our SEO techniques are more long term and apply to all search engines. We use techniques that will give you a competitive edge long term as well as short term. Our SEO does not incur monthly costs, but is a one time optimisation. Of course you are quite welcome to have another SEO company optimise the webpages we produce and we would work in close collaboration with them to ensure there are no hold ups in the production of your website. But please beware as there are many bogus SEO companies out there so be sure to check out clients testimonials before committing.
Your keywords should ideally be brain stormed (with our help). A good keyword or phrase (i.e. combination of keywords) however is one that people search for on a regular basis, but has very little competition from other websites. We can research keywords and phrases and obtain this information such as the number of times a certain keyword or phrase is searched for per day and how many other websites (i.e.. Competition) target that keyword or phrase.
The other factor in the ranking of your website is its link popularity. This is how many quality and related website link to your website. Each website that links to you is considered a vote and popularity plays a big factor in the ranking in the search engine results.
Directories
Directories are another way of finding information on the web. Directories categorise websites into topics and sub-topics. People browse the topics which contain links to websites related to that topic and a description of that topic. Submission of a website to most directories unlike search engines are regulated by human editors. For this reason it takes a long time to get listed in the major directories.
There is no optimisation required for directories, as the websites and description are listed either alphabetically or in a random order.
Apart from the traffic driven to your website having a listing in a directory has another advantage. It increases your websites ranking in the search engine results. The more quality and related websites that link to your website the greater the link popularity.
The four major directories we submit your website to are: Open Directory Project, Joeant, GoGuides and Gimpsy.
Sponsored Links and Adverts
Another very successful and targeted method of attracting people to your website is the use of sponsored links. You may have noticed the sponsor links or adverts along side your search results. These sponsored links are often free to setup and incur no monthly charges. You pay per click no matter how many impression (number of times your link or advert is displayed).
Every time someone clicks on your link or advert you are charged a certain amount. The exact amount depends on the competition for the keywords you choose to target. For example the lowest cost per click is £0.04 (4 pence). In order to gain a higher position in the order of the sponsored links or adverts is to raise the amount you are willing to pay per click. Heavy competition can force a keyword upto a cost of over £1.00 per click. But this only usually occurs for very general keywords such as 'computer' or 'travel'. By targeting specific keywords or phrases you can usually obtain a #1 position in the list of sponsored links or adverts for under £0.08 per click. Since each person that clicks on your link or advert is interested in your website or what you have to sell, sponsored links and adverts are a very cost effective means and advertising and promotion. Most sponsored links and advert programs also allow you to put a daily limit on the amount you may be charged. If you reach your daily limit your advert will not be shown for the rest of the day.
The sponsored link / advert program we think is the most cost effective is Google's Adwords. Once your account is set up with them (which is free) you can log-on and watch as your ad campaign progresses. Google's Adwords are shown not only on Google (one of the most popular search engines) but also AOL and MSN. So your advert is put in fount of many many potential customers a day, for very little cost and you can set a daily limit.