Website Search Optimisation

You can have the slickest website in the world but it will be of no benefit unless your audience can find it. This means your website has to read well to search engines (primarily Google). There are four important points to make about search optimisation...

1. Website search optimisation is not an exact science

There are certain things you have to get right, to that extent it is predictable, but the results are not. How effective your search optimisation efforts are depends hugely on what search terms you want to use and the level of competition for those terms. Test this by searching Google and seeing how many results are returned - at the time of writing searching on "paintbrushes" brings back 40,200 (UK) pages, searching on "computer" brings back 7,900,000 (UK) suggesting it's going to be easier to get to the top if you sell paintbrushes. It is therefore important at the outset to decide what your target is, the narrower you can make it the better chance of success you have.

2. Website Search optimisation is an ongoing process 

Google is a bit unpredictable. Search rankings can change for no apparent reason. Sometimes this is thought to be because Google adjust the search algorithm from time to time. Sometimes it is because your competition has changed. More usually it is because the content of your website has changed in an apparently subtle way that impacts the way Google sees it. All these factors have to be monitored and adjusted for.

3. A website that has not been optimized is very unlikely to show up in Google

Unless your website is so niche that no one else does what you do then this true. There are too many competing websites out there that have been optimised to a greater or lesser extent, and if you are not in the first couple of pages (top 20) of the search results then don't expect a lot of passing traffic.

4. Website Search optimisation is not a bolt on extra 

The best optimised websites are designed from the ground up to be search friendly. The nature of your content, how it is put together, the precise wording you use and the architecture of your website are all relevant factors and must be got right. It is easiest to do this from the start and very difficult to optimise a poorly constructed site retrospectively. In such instances it is easier to start again. 

estm website search optimisation service 

The website search optimisation service from estm is an end to end process. We will start by helping you decide on the most appropriate keywords - the importance of getting this right can't be understated, there is no benefit in ranking high for search terms nobody is going to use. We then benchmark your website recording results position against your chosen search terms, and then analyse your site. If there are architectural changes necessary these will have to be referred back to your site developer (although if you are using a developer that hasn't got search right maybe you should consider changing). If not we will go through your website word by word. As changes are made to your website we monitor and record search ranking and adjust accordingly. Depending on how frequently your website is crawled the process can take three months or more before a relatively stable position is reached, but requires continual monitoring.

Our expectation is that any website should be able to rank Number 1 for at least one three word search exprssion with several other two or three word search terms also in the top ten. If your website doesn't then contact us, we can help.