If you take a look at lot of web design companies, you will undoubtedly see a section saying SEO or Search engine optimisation it seems like this art has found its way into the main stream web design community. However, without a little knowledge, you could be throwing money away on an ineffective service, a lot of web design companies will tell you that they can optimise your site, but getting to the top of the search engines with the phrase that pays is not a five-minute job

SEO It is time consuming

A SEO campaign is time consuming and very intense, a fine balance of words and weights. With no closer way of turning the written language into pure math, but with the exception that part of the equation is hidden from you and changing on a regular basis. This is where true skill is demonstrated from the search engine optimiser to bring your site from zero to hero.

Control your SEO expectations

In my opinion, planning a successful website should begin as early as possible, months if not in some cases years ahead. A new site will find it very difficult to rank for competitive terms until, like a fine wine it has matured. In the early days of a website going live try to aim for search terms that, as I call it; are low hanging fruit. For example, the term “web design” is highly competitive and the chances of a young site ranking anywhere near the top 10 for this is quite small. However, if you add some level of localisation to the mix like “web design Yorkshire” this “keyword phrase” would be easier to rank in the top position but still quite a lot of competition from other web sites. We can take this even further by adding a less common qualifier, “Web design Doncaster” Doncaster is a smaller graphical area then Yorkshire so it should be less competitive for this term. You would need to, or get your search engine optimisation company to research this more in depth.

Do your keyword research

Keyword research is so important, as targeting the wrong words or phrases can mean a great expensive site getting next to no quality traffic from the web. Not all traffic is created equal. If you sell nothing but “green umbrellas”, but you are targeting the keyword umbrellas, sure, you may get a lot of traffic but most of it won’t convert to a sale because some want a white umbrella some want a yellow.

Calculating the Return on investment

The return on investment need’s to be considered before you undertake any sort of outsourced search engine optimisation. It is always a good idea to get your SEO company to perform a feasibility study before you undertake spending out on the full project. A search engine optimisation feasibility study involves finding out the amount of searches taking place per month for a selection of key words or phrases related to your product or service. Then you will need to discover how many sites are competing for the same terms. Factor in the amount of profit you would get from selling your product or service. There will be some form of estimation on the figures from this you will get a better idea of the amount of work needed to get to the top of the search engines such as Google and Yahoo and whether getting to the top ten will turn a profit or not. Its better to spend a little then to waste a lot

I hope this short guide has been helpful to preparing to take on a SEO company with some of the things you need to know as a client