Basic website optimization works – 6 things anyone can do.

Increasingly, companies have been turning to us to help them get their websites optimized so that more potential customers can find them.

Whilst search engine optimization (SEO) is a bit of a dark art that for a fair bit of financial outlay can sometimes (but not guarantee) effective results, there are a whole host of processes that can be carried out that at the very least, will get your website on a solid plateau from where you can then actively and effectively promote your business and services.

A lot of these processes can be carried out yourself at no cost but if like practically every other business in these tricky times, you are too busy to get down to it, contact us to take care of this for you.  Whilst we’d love to do this for you, here’s a note of some of the things we’d do that you can do yourself:

1. register your business with the Google Local Business Center - your business will be listed within Google Maps and it pays to register with as many Google-related services as possible.  Registering your business is free – all you need is a Googlemail account.
2. register the site with Google Webmaster Tools – and submit a sitemap – this is crucial.  Google’s service will let you know if there is any problem with your site regarding it’s visibility and provide you with a host of tips and usage information to enable you to maximise your site’s ability to be indexed by search engines. Submitting your website is free – all you need is a Googlemail account.
3. very important….register the site with Google Analytics – this is one of the best stats packages around and is totally free.  Installing Analytics into your website takes just a few moments and whilst this won’t improve your site’s visibility, it does provide you with an excellent method of measuring improvements.
4. Make sure you have a different description Meta tag for each page on the site and that the content of this tag isn’t overly long but accurately describes what the page is about.
5. Make sure your page title is different and relevant to/for each page.
6. Make sure your homepage (ie the one at index.html ) has suitable content and links to other relevant pages within your website.

We carried this process out for a client (a Glasgow-based high-end product retailer) and the results have been pretty fantastic.  The period listed below covers the month before the changes (in green) and the month after (in blue) the changes to the site were implemented.

The headlines in this are that visits increased by 27% and visitors to the site viewed nine pages per visit instead of the previous two.  They were also spending twice as long on the site.

As this client exists in a fairly competitive market, we also run a Google Adwords campaign for them on an ongoing basis.  An increase in the client’s organic (ie, where visitors have found the website without using the Adwords link) traffic is a good sign as it means less visitors will be using the paid advert link.

Again, over the same period, the basic website optimisation techniques we have carried out have had a huge impact on how visitors are finding the site.  Whilst there’s been a healthy 42% increase in the number of direct visitors (users who have just typed in the URL to visit the site), the number of users finding the site organically via Google has increased a massive 180%.

All of this is has been achieved by basic website optimisation, rather than out and out SEO simply by taking a fairly prosaic approach to site structure and how information is displayed.  Also, it’s completely transparent and (I hate to say this) anyone can do it.

The question is, do YOU have the time?  If you don’t, get in touch.