There is no dark art to search engine tuning. There are however around 50 main ways to increase a)your ranking and b) the quality and accuracy of your visitors.

Addressing your real need
Many companies I work with initially ask me to increase hits to the site. This is the scattergun approach which has its benefits in identifying search anomalies that can be harnessed as part of your strategy. It can be good for target non specific consumer markets - everyone, male, female, 19 -90, etc.

There is truth that it is a numbers game. Statistics show us that the more hits you get the more enquiries you will have. The more enquiries, the more conversions. Seems simple!

What if you are British Nuclear Group? You want to educate the public on your services and also sell your services to other countries. Of course SEO for such large companies is integrated as part of a wider marketing push. Anyone who needs a nuclear clean up service will probably be aware of BNG. Here we would use a different strategy.

What if you are selling to the public sector? Again a different strategy is needed. A targeted, tailored strategy that will display information on search engines specific to your search.

There are multiple input variables here. Each has a different balance and can be applied in a particular way. Sometimes a general set up with annual tweaks will suffice, other times monthly updates and monitoring is required.

What is certain is they both need actioning and measuring and adjusting at the relevant intervals.

Some elements of search engine management are down to patience. A large factor in newly registered domains is building 'trust' with search engines. They will want to see a steady growth without spamming methods. That is why we always recommend new sites are set up with only a basic SEO package. There is little point in investing heavily in page tuning if the engines are not responsive to that for a few months.

Small Print
There is usually a lot of caveats involved with search engine optimisation contracts and this is because there can be no guarantees. Anyone can come top of a search engine with 10 word phrases, what is more difficult is getting good results with real 2-3 word search phrases; providing results that are acted on and the content relevant. Google, for example does not like pages that have high 'bounce rates' - all this shows is that the search terms are not suitable to the content and will drop it.

What is certain though, if no action is taken, low rankings will generally follow.

How to get good listings
As Drawn services a majority of clients located in and around Chiswick and West London, we have decided to target our search engine presence under 'Web Design Chiswick'. Clients find us under this search term and the rest is up to us!

This is great
...but we must also be found under 'Web Design Birmingham Al'.

This is where the service we provide really makes the difference. There are also other considerations, such as the customer search feedback loop, which ensures your customers search terms are added to the site to make it easier for the next person to find the site using these terms. This is built up from the ongoing analysis and reaction.

There are many other factors involved with search engine management. What about if you are servicing clients abroad - how will they find your site? How do you handle spam sites using your content, lowering your sites ranking?

The secret
We are up front about our service, as we mentioned there is no black art, just a lot of options to consider. Its a mixture of 10 years experience of SEO (search engine optimisation) and SEM (search engine management) in a continually changing playing field that gives us the edge.

Let us complete a free search engine optimisation audit and provide you with some recommendations. Just enter the search phrases or key words you wish to be found under and we will tell you how to get listed in the top 5. A yearly service can cost as little as £360! PLease note we are under no obligation to provide a response and this does not constitute any type of service agreement.