Search Engine Optimisation for your website
Search Engine Optimisation is about ensuring that when someone enters a particular keyword into Google, Bing or other search engines, you have everything set up properly in a way that ensures that the search engine can find your site and present it in the search engine results page in a prominent position, ideally in the 'sweet spot' just below the paid ads.
There is no easy set formula to doing this. The main search engines develop their logic, sometimes referred to as an algorithm, and frequently refine it to improve the way it works. Google, for example, are keen to support quality sites with good content and not to support sites that are over-engineered with the single aim of pushing them up the search engine ranks. Google does not publish their algorithm because if it did, they know that every web designer would rapidly change their sites to try and 'game' the system.
SEO becomes a bit of a guessing game or a game of trial and error, of test and learn. What works one week might not work so well the next.
If you are looking for an affordable SEO service, I can offer a website build based on what I have learnt that works for local businesses. You will appreciate that I cannot make any absolute guarantees that it will work as effectively for your site. As always, it depends on how much site optimisation work I can do for you and the level of website optimisation effort your competitors expend and how long they have been in business.
Why is search engine optimisation important?
When you do a Google search or a Bing search you will usually see a bunch of paid adverts at the top of the page, followed by what are known as organic searches. You can either pay to be at the top of the page or do the work to get your website onto the first page of Google (in the top ten entries). Ideally, you want to be in the top three entries or for a perfect position at number one for your chosen keywords.
You could of course choose to do both paid advertising and SEO work but paid advertising is expensive and once you stop paying it ceases to be effective whereas a longer-term SEO strategy can reap rewards for the future and doesn't have to cost you a fortune, maybe just investment in your time and writing skills. Data from Google suggests that more and more businesses, conscious of decreasing revenues are focussing more on SEO in 2023 than on paid advertising.
What has changed in the last year
Overall, going into 2025 searchers seem to be trusting the highest organic results a bit more than last year (39.6% → 39.8% Click Through Rate for Position 1; 18.4% → 18.7% for Position 2). In Paid Search, the main difference was that the average clickthrough rate for the top 3 positions decreased (1.7% → 1.5%) due to the impact of AI overviews. Local search Click Through Rates remained about the same.
Source: https://firstpagesage.com/reports/google-click-through-rates-ctrs-by-ranking-position/
The key takeaway for me is that if you can get to position 1 naturally (as opposed to paying for adverts) you are going to get 19 times more clicks! This supports my own view of ads. I rarely click on an ad as I think that if someone has to pay for ads then they are going to have to pass on that cost to me when I purchase their product or service.
Key SEO factors
TEXT & META DATA
Well written, relevant text content will always take priority.
SPEED
It is critical that your site loads quickly, especially on mobile.
As of 2023 64.97% of web traffic is via a mobile device. Source hubspot.com.
LINKS
Incoming links from relevant sites are a sign of a respected site and important for any SEO based strategy
The SEO services I offer
I offer a bespoke search engine strategy which looks at your individual business needs, your unique selling points if applicable and what channels are appropriate to focus on.
I will advise on what keywords to focus on and suggest a strategy of pages for the website that will address those keywords. I will also build the tools you need to add pages via a blog so that you can add fresh content yourself to the site.
I will also suggest other ways in which you can improve your social media presence.
One selling point of my own is that during an IT career at GE (General Electric) I developed a style of dealing with business customers that meant that I talked to them in terms they could understand, without referring to technical jargon. I feel no need to try and impress people with buzz words or technical terms. I continue to try very hard with my website clients when talking about SEO to talk in terms that are easy for them to relate to.
Key ranking factors to improve a site's rankings in what are called the organic search results.
Despite the constant changes in the rules about what position a site gets shown at in the search results, there are some factors that will always have a major influence:
- Number one is content i.e. the text that appears on each page. Content is king and so it should be. The text needs to be written in quality prose that would make sense to the average reader. It does not need to be stuffed with keywords to such an extent that it is nonsense.
- Increasingly important is page speed. Nobody likes a slow site. Now that Google ranking of sites is based on the experience of a user on mobile devices, page speed has never been more important. Images must be served in the smallest format consistent with quality which currently means that they must be delivered in .webp format.
- The meta description is important because that is what is shown on the search engine results page on Google. It is the first thing that your customer sees about your site. They won't see much - just a couple of sentences but it should be made as relevant to what they are looking for as possible.
- Browser page titles, title tags and headings are all important to pay attention to as these signal the content of the page both to the reader and to Google so need to be both relevant to the search that is being requested and to the textual content of the web page.
- Images can be used to enhance the design of the page or illustrate concepts. They can also be used to enhance keyword optimisation by the use of alternative text tags attached to them.
Image Optimisation
The text is important but who wants to browse a site comprised only of text? Maybe an academic but for most ordinary people they want to see images that either reflect the service that you are offering them or, where that is not possible create a mood that reflects the service that you are wanting your customers to consider. At the very least, good-quality images should form part of the design aspect of your site. I often start with an image and use one of the colours in that image to determine the colour palette for a site.
Clients often want the ability to change images and yes, it is possible to allow content-managed images to be used in a website but there is also a downside to this for SEO. As I said before speed, and especially the speed of your site on mobile, is critical to success and if someone loads a 10MB image to the Home page, at one stroke that could destroy any speed advantages that I have been able to set up in the initial project launch. So if we are not careful it can become a trade-off between the site looking great and the site loading poorly because of images that are not properly optimised.
Just to give you a flavour of the amount of work that potentially goes into a full-width banner image on one of my sites:
I create three images. Large at 1920 pixels wide, medium at 1024 pixels wide and small at 640 pixels wide and create these as .webp format which is currently the best format supported by web browsers of images. These images are then shown, depending on what browser size is being used by the viewer of your site. It is what Google expects to find and if it doesn't find it, your site won't fail but your site might not rank so well as you would wish.
The format of the image is also key. It needs to be in landscape mode as that is what works on desktop and laptop computers but it should also be capable of being displayed on a phone where the traditional way of viewing a phone creates a screen that is in portrait mode. So the image must be readily adaptable to portrait as well. Plus there are a multitude of different screen sizes when you consider the huge variety of devices.
If there is a person in the image, then it may work better that that person is near the centre of that image so that, no matter what orientation of screen the viewer is using, the person remains visible and doesn't get half cut off at the edge of the screen.
So image management, especially on the Home page, where you will need most SEO benefit is complex.
I am here to help and work with you as to what are the best options. Given the choice, I would prefer you to have a site that has some hope of ranking on the first page but I can only do that if I work with you to optimise and manage the images on your Home page. Other pages may also need to work as ranking pages. Usually, the Gallery and Blog pages are the safest places for my clients to load their own photos with no intervention required from me.
Creating video content for your site
Video can also form an important component of your site for various reasons:
- It almost certainly benefits your position in the Google Places ranking and therefore in your overall ranking.
- It also enables you to engage with your target audience so they can get a sense of what you are like to deal with.
- It may help to show your product or service and show customers engaging with your product or service.
I can film and produce a professional-grade video for you (with your help of course). I have both the equipment and the skills to film a high-quality 4K video to enhance your website and give it an up-to-date professional quality. Please see my recent Redmove website for an example of my video work as the background on the Home page.
I have also filmed presentations by some of my clients who wish to showcase their work or make a short introductory video about the services they offer and the way they work.
Regular Updates
Google loves fresh, new, relevant content added regularly to your site. It indicates that you have something new and interesting to say that your clients may want to hear. There are several ways to do this but one very important way is to seek testimonials for your work and publish them on your website. Regular updates are welcome to me and it usually only takes me a few minutes to add a few lines of text to your site. So I offer this service within the initial set-up cost for the first 12 months at least. Usually, the turnaround time is very swift, unless I am on holiday of course. If I can't do your changes straight away, I will send you an email telling you when I will be able to do them.
Managing the Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
One of the last pieces of the SEO work is to ensure that everything is set up correctly at Google and Bing and that these search engines have indexed the pages that one would expect them to index. Sitemaps need to be correct and submitted to the respective search console. Any messages about errors need to be monitored, analysed and if necessary corrective action taken.
Assistance with Google My Business and Local SEO
If you are running a small local business and you want to be found in local searches then you really need to start by signing up for Google My Business (formerly Google Places). When you have an entry in Google My Business you will see in some local searches a blended search results page which is a mixture of generic results and a grid of results returned from Google maps with markers A through G highlighting the location of the businesses on a map.
You don't even need to have a website to start and it is free. There are no catches but it is worth thinking about what information you are going to put in there first. I can do the set-up for you but there's really nothing that you can't do for yourself and the sooner you start, the quicker you will show up in local searches, assuming you've set it up correctly.
The key thing to completing the Google places page is to make sure that key details like Name, Address and Telephone Number are accurate and consistent with any local directories that may have you listed. Google will cross-reference this information and if any of it is inconsistent then Google may just not set up your Google My Business entry and you will not appear on Google maps. It is important to fill in as many of the sections as possible, including times of opening, payment methods, photos and even videos if you have any.
If for some reason you are unwilling to supply a permanent address which is shown online then this can make things more difficult to optimise for local SEO but I will still do what I can to optimise your website site for your locality.
Help with Social Media and linking
For a business looking to enhance its SEO, whatever your location, the next step is for you, the site owner to get as many relevant links and visitors as you can get to your site and the best way to do that is by using social media posts that link back to your website. Clients that are social media savvy and regularly active tend to do quite well with their website rankings. This could entail something as simple as posting a photo from your phone to Instagram each time you do some work for a client.
I stress the term 'relevant' because inappropriate links to your site can damage its position in the rankings.
Advice on Link Building
There are companies that offer a service called link building. I don't offer this service as it is not my core competence. These companies will, for a fee, create blog posts that point to your site, thus providing an external link. The blog posts that are written are of varying standards and are often from websites with doubtful relevance to your business. You need to be very careful with this approach as Google may very well penalise your site if it thinks that you are trying to game the system.
It is much better to try and get your own links. The obvious starting point for this, for a local business, after signing up to social media websites, is to sign up for local directories where you can enter the URL to your site.
Adding Structured Data Schemas
Although Google do not state that they use structured data as a ranking factor, it is obviously advisable to make it as easy as possible for all search engines to figure out what your pages are about. The best way to do this is by the use of structured data schemas, a series of preset datasets that can be filled in that describe the page and its content as well as the organisation or local business that owns the website. This data is hidden from the view of someone browsing the website and is created using a special coding structure called JSON which is one of several ways of defining structured data.
Consultancy for Search Engine Optimisation
I have also acted on occasion as an SEO consultant to a company locally with little SEO knowledge or experience trying to get their site to be more visible. I can provide advice, support and training to whoever in your organisation is hands-on in building a website if that person is new to the world of SEO.
I am often asked if I can improve the position of someone's existing site in Google and I have to say that yes I can, providing I can rebuild it so as to get control of not only the text content but also the metadata which is so important to SEO. Keyword research is vital to the process. It is not uncommon that I come across websites that have been built without much regard to whether people are actually searching for the terms that the site has been optimised for!
Website Auditing
I use tools to check my work and run these tools regularly during the build and launch phases of a new project. They report on the content and technical aspects of the site and flag anything that needs attention. These tools can equally be run against an existing site that is not one of mine. If you think there may be something wrong with your existing site I can run these tools fairly quickly and I am happy to share my thoughts. I promise not to bombard you with emails telling you about all the things that are wrong with your site unless you ask me to.
