What is Search Engine Optimisation?

It doesn’t matter how good your site looks if people can’t find it. Once you’re website is designed and online, you can then begin promoting it through methods that are appropriate to your budget.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings.

It is light years away from an exact science and results do not happen overnight (despite those promising a “top ten” placement). There are, after all, only ten spots on the first page of any search engine result. That’s heavy-duty competition. One thing that everybody tends to agree on is that it requires patience, perseverance and a thick skin.

There’s evidence that illustrates Google gives new sites a “bump” in indexing (followed up fairly quickly by a settling down to a “natural” position). There’s evidence that older sites get a premium “bump” simply on the merits of being around for a longer period of time. Google uses a multitude of data centres (results may vary in a Google search depending on which data centre you connect to) and their index is constantly in a state of flux (check the total search results on any given Google search – they vary from time to time, sometimes wildly). Accordingly, half of your SEO activities will be a waiting game. If you don’t immediately get the desired results, changing your site in a fire-fighting fashion could actually hamper you, especially as you’re not always going to be sure what fire you are fighting. However, as part of an overall marketing campaign, SEO will lead to more visitors, more targeted inquires and more than likely, some new clients. And that’s what it’s all about.

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