Search Engine Strategies 2002 Conference & Expo Covent Garden, London.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (Placement)

Search Engine Placement - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of building (and maintaining) a website in a manner that would help it get listed higher on major search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Search Engine Optimisation starts with a website evaluation and optimization phase. This is followed by a maintenance phase where web pages are regularly modified to maintain a high rank. There are a number of techniques undertaken by SEO professionals for optimizing websites. We have highlighted 5 important steps in the SEO lifecycle that are very crucial for a successful web presence. These steps are:

Website evaluation
Keyword Research and Selection
Meta Tag and Page Optimization
Directory and Search Engine Submissions
Text Link Campaigns

Website Evaluation

As a first step of our Search Engine Optimisation process, a comprehensive evaluation of your website is conducted and a detailed report is prepared. The report points out deficiencies in the website that could lessen the chances of your site getting listed in the top positions on the search engines. Here a few of elements that are scrutinized during the evaluation: Sitemap usage, Usage of Flash/JavaScript/Heavy Images, Website Navigation, Search Engine unfriendly code, Dynamic Pages, Frames, Style sheets, spamming techniques to be avoided (if used). This report serves as a good baseline reference to compare with when the 1 st iteration of the optimization process is completed.

Keyword Research and Selection

This phase deals with selecting the right key phrases that your customers would type in the search engines to find your site. Keyword selection is the key to success for any Search Engine Optimisation effort. We conduct a thorough research on the keywords that would fetch you the right traffic: your potential customers. We realize that the key is to think like your customer and not pick keywords that "we" or "you" think are important. These keywords are then used to create keyword-rich website content.

Meta Tag and Page Optimization

After carefully selecting the keywords, we craft a page-by-page content plan. Firstly, we create unique "Title" and "Description" meta-tags for each page using the respective key phrases. Your web page content is then modified (or created) to include these key phrases in strategic locations the search engines give importance to. We also pay detailed attention to the keyword density and ensure that each page has the right content with the right number of key phrases, while keeping the content very human-reader friendly.

Directory and Search Engine Submissions

Once the optimized pages are created and uploaded, we submit your site to major Search Engines and Directories. Directories are human edited and verified collection of websites. Some directories offer to list websites for free, while some charge a fee for submission. The website listings in directories are classified based on the category (of business) they belong to. Search engines can automatically find a website on the Internet once the site has been accepted in important directories like Yahoo and DMOZ. Websites can also be submitted to Search Engines like Google.

Text Link Campaigns

Text Link campaign is a process of obtaining relevant external links for your web pages and maintaining them to keep your site ranking high on search engines. Google ranks a web page based on the page's popularity, which it rates based on a Page Rank. Link Popularity is a measure of number of external website pages linking to that particular page. It's not just the quantity of links, but the quality in terms of "who" is linking to that page. Our planned Link Campaigns aim to obtain and maintain the best links: very relevant to your website theme and with a predetermined minimum page rank.

These are just a few of the important steps in any typical SEO process. Our experience in optimizing numerous websites for a number of different business domains has helped us craft a unique methodology and streamline our optimization processes.