Effective SEO helps you generate more business because it increases the number of visitors you receive from the search engine’s organic results, often referred to as the free results.

This increase in relevant focused traffic often results in a much higher conversion rate because the visitors will have found your site by using terms that relate directly to the products and services you offer.  In this way you know that they are already interested in what you are offering when they visit.

During testing we have found that websites using SEO get on average 14 times more visitors than those which do not.

If you have a site that offers building services across the whole country then terms such as window, door and building may, on first glance be what you wish to rank for however you need to consider the following.

If you optimise the site for a term that is too broad such as windows you will be competing with many companies that have nothing to do with your business model, including things such as Microsoft (Windows computer software), window manufactures and so on, so my recommendations would be to target more focused searches such as, window repairs, window fitting.

If you do decide to go for these focused terms you should also look at targeting the local areas for these services, such as window fitters Dorset or window repairs Berkshire.

This is going to be true for all the other terms you suggested, it is going to be better if you target the main term combined with the local area it relates too.

This is because of the way people use the internet, they know that if they just type in window repairs they will then have to filter a lot of worthless sites that are not in the area they live, so they use towns, cities and counties to narrow the search and make it more relevant.

The search engines are also trying to provide as much local search capabilities as they can too, so including the areas is going to help people find you.

This all means that there are a lot more keywords to be ranked for, my recommendation are you select the top 10 areas to target & combine them with the services, see how the results you get for this works out and then add more areas.

We have experience with this sort of thing with companies we do work for, one is an events supplies company that puts you in contact with marquee companies, toilet hire & catering companies all over the country, so they need to be found for terms such as marquee hire Dorset. The other is a restaurants and dining club that review and recommend restaurants, Indian, Italian, Chinese etc all over the North of England, so they need to be found for terms such as Manchester restaurants. You can also do it for terms that offer local services such as web design Salisbury.

This targeting areas for the individual services has proved successful for each of these companies.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.  It is the art of telling the search engines what a page on a website is about and ensuring that it appears above those of your competitors.

The optimisation of a page means that when the spiders from a search engine visit a page they are quite clear that the page in question relates to this specific topic and in particular this keyword or phrase.

SEO also encourages the search engines to give that page the highest possible score for the targeted keyword or phrase, while making sure that they do not get a penalty for incorrect use of the different elements involved.

It is SEO that helps your site rise in the search engines.

Summer Glau is stunning in her new role as Terminator protector; from action to still scenes she carries herself with a natural grace honed by her ballerina training. From her initial role in the series Firefly through to her present incarnation as Cameron, she has a real presence.

The same thing should be said for a well designed website from its inception it should be stunning making you want to look at the site. It should allow you to move gracefully from page to page and finally should have some extremely effective online marketing applied to it that ensures that people that want to find the site can find it. And not have your visitor saying “Asta la vista, baby!” (ouch sorry!).

I have used Summer Glau as an example because she represents popular TV sci-fi at the moment. Great looks, strong presence and a following that ensures the series does well. Blogs will only work if the content sets up a desire, they need people to want to follow what is written, to in turn generate visits or sales. Ensuring your Blog is upto date and updated regularly could be the difference in whether your business is successful or terminated (sorry again!)

At search engine optimisation- SEO Dorset we are often asked questions like – How does a search engine know what my site is about?

The search engines use small programs called spiders or bots to gather information on as many web pages as they can find. They use a number of different criteria in order to determine what the pages are about.

They then give the page a score and this dictates how well that page ranks for a given word or phrase.

The things a search engine looks for when determining your rank will vary over time, but include the title tag, text on the page and links to your site.

This score changes constantly but can be improved for your specific website through the use of good SEO techniques.

However, you need to be aware that incorrect use or indeed overuse of these techniques can cause your pages to fall in the search engine or even get banned.

Using a professional search engine optimisation company to promote your site will help ensure the “rules” of search engine optimisation are kept too so that you get the search engine rankings and results with out getting banned by the search engines.

A professional designed website from a company with an established track record can also be of great benefit, if this company also has provable search engine optimisation skills as well as web design skills you are on to a winner, we recommend web design Salisbury.

Search engine optimisation strategy – or SEO in action

There are two main ways to drive traffic to your site, Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

With PPC you pay each time someone clicks on your advertisement and visits your site, which can be a very good way to get visitors to the site when it is first built.

SEO is a long-term strategy which involves setting up the web pages in such a way that the search engines can find them amongst the many billions of pages on-line. This strategy requires considerable time, effort and expertise so it is advisable to use professionals to ensure maximum benefit.

With the new Tomb raider underworld game due for release on the 21st November 2008 the hype is well underway on the internet.

The marketing has, as is normally the case, been impressive with demos & reviews popping up on magazine, tech and gaming sites, it seems that every blog on the internet has an opinion on what this game is going to mean not only for the future of the Tomb raider franchise but for the game industry as a whole.

The marketing from the Tomb raider team has built from a whisper 12 months or so ago into a crescendo of chatter now that the release is imminent and all this on-line marketing hype is set to make Tomb raider underworld one of the biggest games releases of the year.

This is just one example of how effective and sustained Search Engine Optomisation can create a buzz that can be heard all around the internet.

The search engine optimization strategy you use should be dependent on what you wish to achieve from your website, if you are looking to attract buyers the strategy is going to be different to if you were hoping to attract people looking for information.

However some questions you need to ask of the search engine optimization strategy stay the same, these include

Free or paid for traffic?

Paid for traffic

This is most probably going to be in the form of Pay Per Click (PPC) companies offering this include Google, Yahoo & MSN – depending on the business sector you work in will be one of the big factors in the overall cost, if your product can be sold on a website & there is a good level of profit or if the chance of recurring business is high then the PPC costs tend to be high too.

Insurance, Medical & loans are all traditionally high cost areas for Pay Per Click.

Free traffic

If you are looking to go down the free search engine optimization strategy route then you will need to ensure your site is correctly optimised & you have good relevant links coming back to your site.

With free or organic Search engine optimisation the benefits are clear, you do not pay for each visitor to the site, instead you compete with other sites to get good rankings in the search engines, this can be time consuming and frustrating and there are some technical hurdles to overcome.

You could use the services of a search engine optimisation company, such as Cravenplan who will work to get you ranked high in the search engines and who can provide you with proof of their successes and testimonials from satisfied customers.

The most common way of paying for products on-line is via credit card. To make sure you do not miss out on sales you need to ensure you have a merchant account with your bank and a payment gateway such as Worldpay or Secpay.  Your web design company and your bank will help you set this up.

Credit card processing is carried out away from your site on a secure server and you will not have access to any credit card details.  This guarantees security for both you and the purchaser.

When payment has been accepted, you will be notified that the transaction is ready for processing and you can send the goods to your customer. The customer’s payment is then deposited into your business account by the payment processing company.

You need a clearly designed website where users and search engines can immediately see which products or services you are selling.

The product needs to be clearly displayed.  Professional photographs will enhance the look of the site.

You need to set up a method for accepting on-line payments so that your customers can buy directly from you and feel secure in the transaction.

You also need to consider how to promote your site once it has been built. The two most common methods are Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), with most companies using a combination of the two.