Newcastle SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of developing a website. There are billions of pages of information available on the Internet and these numbers continue to skyrocket even as you're reading this sentence. SEO is about standing out not only from this crowd but also from your competitors.
Internet users locate web pages in one of three ways:
- Advertising
- Guessing
- Search Engines - Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live, etc.
What's wrong with these searching strategies?
Advertising your web address is not only expensive and time-consuming, but it is only a temporary solution. Once your ads have been replaced - perhaps even by your competitors - it's likely that users will forget all about your website. It can take millions of pounds of consistent customer-focused advertising to keep a web address in the minds of the general population.
Similarly, waiting for your visitors to guess your URL is a very dangerous practise indeed. Not only are they likely to get it wrong sometimes, but your competitors can register these bad guesses for themselves!
Why Google (and SEO!) are vital to the success of your website
Both marketing and guessing strategies do little to address that most Internet users go online for research purposes; that is, they don't know exactly who or what they're looking for, so they're going to search for the answer. Certainly, it's great if customers already know the name of your company and what you do, but this does nothing to address the task of bringing in new business!
Search engines are the single most important way to bring new customers to your business, and search engine optimization (SEO) addresses this. With SEO, we analyse the market and target your company's website towards specific search terms, so your website will be listed earlier in the search engine rankings. This makes web users more likely to click on your page and find out about your business.
Developing an SEO programme for your business
SEO is a multi-step process that involves detailed analyses of your business, your competitors, and the general marketplace in which your business operates. SEO also relies on a firm understanding of the way people use search engines and how you can capitalise on these trends.
As with all of our work, we tailor our SEO approach 100% to your company's needs and requirements. We'll sit down with you and discuss (either in-person, over the phone, or via email) how your website has been doing so far and figure out how we can help you improve. We also thoroughly research your market; after all, no two businesses are the same.
Once this individualised SEO research has been done, we'll begin SEO work on your website. We'll optimize the HTML code based on our discussions and implement secondary SEO plans too. This often involves search engine submissions, building additional keyword-rich content, optimising your website's code, building your site's reputation (PageRank), Web 2.0 advertising, and many other strategies.
To schedule an SEO consultation and discuss how these SEO strategies can help bring customers to your website, give us a call on 0191 645 1455 today!
How SEO can help your company - A practical example
Problem: You've just launched a website for a brand new Newcastle-based hotel called EZ Sleepers. After a week, you check your visitor stats and see that no one is coming to your website. Your phones aren't even ringing. What happened?
SEO is about telling people that your website exists. In this example, we would look at primary ways in which potential customers find hotels. For example, a potential customer might be planning a trip to Newcastle, and they want to know about area hotels.
In January 2008, 1,971 people searched using the terms "Newcastle hotel". If you have a hotel in Newcastle but you're not in these top search results, you're losing a lot of business!
Solution: We would immediately look to optimise your website for important search terms. We would also look at other forms of Internet marketing as a way of telling people about your website. The end result is that your new website would begin showing up in the search engine results for these relevant terms, and you'd have plenty of new customers finding your business.
Problem solved.
