SEO your site!

Is your website generating traffic, or more importantly the type of traffic you want?  If not then you must consider and then implement search engine optimization.  Search engine optimization, or SEO as it is commonly known is in essence the process of making your website more friendly to search engines, giving you higher positioning on search results, and putting you in front of your competitors. 

Linking!

There are many opinions of good linking from your site to other sites, and to other sites from your site, the reality is however very simply.  Relevancy is the key to maximizing this procedure.  If you are a local small business then you should be linked to other “relevant” small businesses.  Let us give you an example of this-

You own a local wedding planner site – therefore relevant links would be to local wedding photographers, local chauffeur car hire businesses, local flower shops and local wedding cake makers would be obvious choices. 

After that, think about local business directories, local blog websites that you can post information about your services and possibly stories about some of your successful weddings, posting articles on local forums and bulletins on networking sites such as facebook, e-cademy and myspace also use sites like linked-in, create profiles, rich in relevant content.

If website content is king, then relevancy is queen – use all your industry knowledge to make it work.  Also get some links from authoritative sources, web pages with google ranking of 4 or above will get you in googles index with a positive start – but don’t forget relevancy.  It’s no good linking to a dozen page 4 ranked sites that are irelevent to your business.  Lets go back to the wedding planner example – by linking to chauffeur car hire, flower shops and wedding photographers you are on the right track, however throw in a few links to plumbers, electricians and building contractors just because they have a higher page rank will lose you points. 

PPC for a quick fix

If you are serious about being at the top of the rankings quickly, you can get there overnight with pay-per-click advertising.  Pay Per Click (or PPC) is a facility seach engines use to drive revenue to their websites, and also gives businesses the opportunity to bid on keywords they think potential customers may type to get the service or product you provide.  PPC campaigns can be time consuming and expensive, but if managed correctly can produce valuable return on investment (ROI).  Again, if you are a local business - -think local with your keywords.  Keywords like “wedding planner” may cost 50p-£2.00 + per click (everytime a unique visitor clicks through to your website you are charged a click rate) where as “wedding planner reading” may only cost £0.10p to £0.50p per click.  With the more specific keywords you select, you are being more selective over your customers requirements.  Be smart, and monitor closely.  There are PPC agencies that can take care of this for you, and charge a fee or a percentage of the click traffic. 

CONTENT is King!

One of the hardest things about growing and developing a new website is about developing the content.  How many pages do you need? Will it work with search engines? What information do you need to make it easy for your customers to understand? Why do you need more content?

All relevant questions – but where do you start?

The answer is, at the beginning – make sure your domain says enough about you and your business, if it is based in the UK, make sure you aquire a UK domain and UK hosting, this will also help.

There are content providers out there who will produce in 30 to 45 days the type of content to blow your opposition away.  But, again, be careful if done incorrectly this could have extreme detrimental effects also. 

If you need content, if you need a website, if you need search engine optimization – BeHigher has the complete solution.  Sites that come with highly detailed web analytics, client references and performance data – everything you need to see just how well your website is performing, and as it grows, how your business can grow with it!