QUESTION: Where does your website appear on the Search Engines?

When you search Google, Altavista, Yahoo, MSN, or one of the other Search Engines where does your website appear?

Are your potential customers able to find your website when searching for your products or services on the major search engines?

If your website doesn't come up on the first page of search engine results ... you lose!

The reality is most searchers are too busy and not willing to check through page after page on the Search Engines trying to find what they are looking for, they will check-out the websites that are easiest to locate on the first results page (SERP) (no doubt you do the same when you're searching).

Search Engines are powerful, they provide FREE advertising for your business, not just locally but world-wide, and millions of people are searching them daily. They are the recognised directory of business services and have replaced the telephone book directories as the first choice of finding products and services.

This means you cannot afford NOT to be found on one or preferably ALL of the Search Engines and ranking high on the first search engine results page (SERP).

QUESTION: Why Search Engine Optimisation?

Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of guiding the development of a website so that it ranks well with the Search Engines and achieves an early position on the Search Engines results pages (SERP).

Search engines send out a spider (or "bot") to visit your site and read the text, links, meta tags, title tags, description tags and site map. The spider gathers the strategic keywords and brings them back to its data-base. When someone types one of those keywords into a search engine, your website url will appear FREE on the organic search engine result pages (SERP); how high it ranks on the results page will depend on how well it has been optimised.

If your site has NOT been optimised correctly your ranking will be low in fact it may NOT appear at all.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION PLAN:
If you’re serious about search engine results the first step is to include a Search Engine Optimisation Plan in your website development planning, this is the first step toward success. A SEO Plan will identify the keys to correctly optimising your site.

Here is an optimisation guide for both new and existing websites:

a) NEW WEBSITE: if you are about to create a new website, make Search Engine Optimisation and a LINK strategy part of the planning and development by developing a Search Engine Optimisation Plan (SEOP);
coupled with ensuring the design of your website is Search Engine friendly i.e. doesn’t contain any ‘search spam’.

By building Optimisation into a new website the architecture needs only be designed once and your site gets indexed properly right from the start.

Higher search engine positions and ranking from the beginning means your site gets to work faster and you will see results in a shorter time frame ... it’s not rocket science!

b) EXISTING WEBSITE: if you already have an established website and you’re not appearing on the Search Engines or have a low ranking on the results pages m-Marketing provides a website evaluation service to thoroughly check your website to determine why you are not being found by the spiders.

The Search Engines frequently change their algorithms and are very vigilant about fighting efforts to manipulate the results with techniques that are considered ‘search spam’. Your website may contain some of these ‘search spam’ techniques, an evaluation will reveal any problems.

Next step is to develop a Search Engine Optimisation Plan (SEOP), m-Marketing will assist you with the SEOP, often a website redesign is necessary to establish a search engine friendly architecture.

Having your website skillfully optimised and regularly maintained is the way to ensure you will ALWAYS be found with a high ranking on the organic search results pages to increase traffic and assist you maximise your online presence.|

SUBMISSION TO SEARCH ENGINES:
m-Marketing recommends manual submission of your website to ALL the Search Engines. There are automatic submission options available however the automatic process is not reliable and can waste valuable time waiting to see your website appear if it has not be picked up. The average time frame for a Search Engine to recognise your url is about 6 weeks and depends on your optimisation how high it will rank.

Why wait for 6 weeks to see if and on what search engine results page (SERP) your website appears - choose a search engine optimisation strategy and manual submission and ensure you will be found when your customers are searching for your product and service.