If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Getting a company’s name and products, or services, onto first page of a genuine Google search isn’t a
trivial piece of work. In fact, there are four distinct skills that a search
engine optimiser needs to possess. Most people possess one or maybe two of these
skills, very rarely do people posses all four. In truth, to get to all four,
people who are good at two of these need to actively develop other skills.
Now, if you are running your own business, do you really have time to do
this? Is this best use of your time?
Specifically four skills needed for SEO work are: Web Design – producing a visually attractive page HTML coding - developing Search Engine friendly coding that sits behind web
design Copy writing – producing actual readable text on page Marketing – what are actual searches that are being used, what key words
actually get more business for your company?
Many website designers produce more and more eye-catching designs with animations
and clever rollover buttons hoping to entice people onto their sites. This
is first big mistake; using designs like these will actually decrease your
chances of a high Google rating. Yes, that’s right; all that money you have paid
for website design could be wasted because no-one will ever find your site.
The reason for this is that before you get people to your site you need to get
the spiderbots to like your site. Spiderbots are pieces of software used by
search engine companies to trawl Internet looking at all websites, and
then having reviewed sites, they use complex algorithms to rank sites.
Some of complex techniques used by web designers cannot be trawled by
spiderbots. They come to your site, look at HTML code and exit stage right,
without even bothering to rank your site. So, you will not be found on any
meaningful search.
I am amazed how many times I look at websites and I immediately know they are a
waste of money. The trouble is that both web designers and company that
paid money really do not want to know this. In fact, I have stopped playing
the messenger of bad news (too many shootings!); I now work round problem.
So, optimising a website to be Google friendly is often a compromise between a
visually attractive site and an easy to find site.
The second skill is that of optimising actual HTML code to be spiderbot
friendly. I put this as different to web design because you really do need
to be “down and dirty” in code rather than using an editor like FrontPage,