You've put a lot of time and effort into your web site, and you'd like it to be found. The problem is that you aren't sure how to go about it. Don't worry, you aren't alone.
As you may have gathered, Search Engine Optimisation is now an industry in its own right. At Semantic we believe in "sticking-to-the-knitting", so we don't offer a dedicated SEO service. Or, to put it to another way, we like to build the SEO directly into our projects.
Our approach to SEO
Essentially our websites have content that is easy to use, easy to share and easy to index. Here's how we do it:
- by working with you to create great content for your audience
- by focusing editorially on your copy, content and links
- by ensuring the site is accessible (Google has no eyes)
- by including Google Sitemaps, to help the spiders discover your content
- by using web standards and best practices (Google likes that)
- By continuing to review traffic and performance after the site is live
According to Google, creating a genuinely useful and informative web site, that others will link to, is the best way of getting near the top of the list. We do that.
Working with professional optimisers
Over the past few years we've had experience of a number of SEO companies ranging from one man bands to big technical operations. Some of them have been fairly unimpressive... Search Engine Spammers, but others have stood out for their pragmatic approach to SEO.
We are happy to recommend the ones we like if you are looking for help with an existing website. However it's also worth checking out Google's list of things to look for (and avoid) when selecting an SEO.
SEO from the horses mouth (Google)
Here's some welcome news from the Common Sense Desk. On the 12th November 2008 Google released a free PDF ebook called the SEO Starter Guide. We recommend it to everyone. Go ahead, invest half-an-hour of your time in getting some simple advice. Then come back to us and ask us about how we build accessible, content-rich websites.