SEO SERVICES FOR UK WEBSITES

Now that Google is set to overtake Channel 4 as a UK advertising medium, (see http://www.brandrepublic.com/bulletins/br/article/601830/google-set-overtake-c4s-uk-ad-revenue-says-duncan/) it's more vital than ever to ensure that your website can be found in the UK search engines. You could rely on paid listings for your traffic but here's why you should invest in search engine optimisation or SEO services.

User research demonstrates that about 70% of the traffic derived from search pages is generated by the natural listings as opposed to the paid listings - Google Adwords being the most popular example of the paid listings.

So, if you're relying on pay-per-click advertising for your website traffic, you're potentially missing out on 70% of the people who are searching for your products or services.

SEO services vary widely in their scope, value and professionalism. Amazingly there are still companies hawking search engine submission services as if submitting a site to a search engine was something that you couldn't train a chimpanzee to do.

To make a material difference to your website's sales performance, these are the kinds of SEO services you should consider:

1. Keyword research. Before you optimise your site you need to know which search terms, keywords and phrases, your prospects are using to find people like you. Keyword research involves checking online databases that capture search terms and assessing their scores for usage and competition.

2. Analytics coding. If you've already got a website, your analytics tools will help you see how people are finding you already. Optimising for terms that people are using will get you more traffic. It's also helpful to know how Google sees your site. The Google webmaster code will help in this respect.

3. On-site optimisation. This involves ensuring that the site is built so that the search spiders can find your pages, building sitemaps in XML, HTML and URL lists for Google, Yahoo and MSN, writing your meta title, description and header tags and ensuring that your visible content features your keywords in such a way that the content reads well but can be recognised by the search engines as relevant to the searches you want to be found against.

4. Off-site optimisation or link recruitment. Search engines, particularly Google, check which pages link to your pages. If they see that lots of relevant web pages, which themselves have attracted links, are linking to your pages, they will rank your pages more highly. You will be seen to be part of a good 'linking neighbourhood' and rewarded accordingly. SEO service companies can help you build a network of links into your site over time.