SEO - Search Engine Optimization.

Clients constantly ask for their sites to be built so they can get to the number one spot on google. And rightfully so. But in my opinion it's just not as easy as that, and not an exact science.

Some companies offer a service to get your site highly ranked but offer no guarantees whilst charging you a high price. To me, this seems like they are profiting off peoples lack of knowledge in an area that is impossible to practically second guess, that no one really knows for sure, apart from obviously Google, Yahoo or anyother search engine who write their algorithms. (Algorithms are essential to the way Google reads all the websites on the internet and then decides what site should go where on the search result page.) Read about algorithms at Wikipedia.

So in a nutshell I prefer to tell my clients this;

Google, is a search engine, and it's job is to provide the best service it can. How can it do this? By being able to bring the best result it can to your search results when you enter a particular word or phrase. So it stands to reason that when a site is built, the best way to build it, is to have this in mind. You can try to trick google, but google won't like that, which is why the algorithms are changed constantly, and if you are caught employing tricks, like putting white text on a white background, you will be penalised.

So I don't like to try and promise top results when I know it's not definitly going to happen. But what I can tell you is that when I build your site it will be built with knowledge and thought about who you are and what you are trying to convey and the best way to re-interpret that to google.

Here are some tips that I follow from a good website called websitehelpers.com. Visit the site and read the article to learn about SEO.

• Write a TITLE tag for each page that accurately describes that page (no more than about 64 characters).
• As much as possible, your new pages should be unique, interesting, authoritative, and compelling.If you want to rank well for the phrase electric widgets, then make your site the best resource about electric widgets available.
• Include at least 250 words on each page at a minimum.
• Link up your site well internally. Each page of the site should link back to the home page as well as a handful of the most important pages on the site, as well as pages related to the page in question
• Put your keywords in the TITLE, heading tags, body copy, and ALT parameters of your pages. Make sure your keywords are reasonably near the top of the page.
• Make sure all of your pages are accessible through normal links (i.e., don't use JavaScript or Flash links exclusively).
• Link to quality relevant sites. After you do so, ask those sites to link to you, but don't make your link to them contingent on whether they link back.
• Most importantly, purge your mind of trying to think of ways you can "trick" your way to the top of the results. Do NOT think about the specific nuts and bolts of how a search engine will rank your pages. Instead, build good, quality pages for your visitors, and trust that the rankings will follow.