There are a number of high-end quality Search Engine Optimising (SEO) and Marketing firms out there today. Ever wondered what is really involved when a website is put through its SEO maintenance check list. The following is an example of work that is normally carried out by professional SEO Company 360innovate.

ANALYSIS
Firstly, when a customer approaches 360 with a view to having SEO work carried out on their site the initial stage is to analyse the site and see what keywords they already target (if any) and also what on-site work needs to be done on the website (we call this on-page optimisation). It's a bit like having a health and safety assessment on your premises, we go through the nuts and bolts of your site, the text, images, layout, navigation, structure and usability features to make sure that its been built to a standard that enables your site to rank at its most optimum in the main search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask).

There are at least 200 individual areas we examine and check and it is a very important first stage that gets you started. Thankfully there are a lot of customers out there who have employed good designers who make sure that the initial work is done and that the first stages as described above can be kept to a minimum.

KEYWORD RESEARCH
Keyword research is a very important step used in identifying what people actually type in the search engines to find your product or services.

For example, most of our customers find us using "SEO Company", or "SEO Company UK", or just "SEO", but we also get traffic from "Search Engine Optimisation Company Scotland" or "Internet Marketing Company" plus a whole range of other sources. Another factor to take into consideration is the conversion rate from a particular keyword search. Conversion rates can be determined by how many times it takes a unique visit to your site to actually buy something or even make an enquiry. There may be multiple reasons why your site is not converting from not targeting the correct traffic, bad design or navigation, perhaps your site suffers from a number of negatives that simply put people off from ordering/enquiring due to the lack of trust.

THE COMPETITION
We look at their site, not just once, but every day, we monitor changes, we log them, we work out why they are achieving such good results and we implement a strategy to better them.

KEYWORD DEFINITION
After extensive research into the keywords and phrases used in your industry we agree with you the amount of keywords that you wish us to focus on.

This will vary from customer to customer, some customers will only want us to focus on a small amount of keywords for their SEO campaign and some will want us to focus on thousands of keywords, this is also how we define how much time we spend on your site initially and on a ongoing basis and according how much it will cost.

ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS/PRESS RELEASES
We produce articles and on-line press releases related to your business on a monthly basis linked to the keywords we use in your campaign, with links to your site within the content. We then release/publish these documents within trusted on-line sites that the search engines like to visit and read on a regular basis, this in turn links back to your site and gives you favourable search engine listing results, as the search engines see you updating your content on a regular basis.

LINK BUILDING
We will seek to link your site to as many other trusted sites available that are in your industry, for example if you are a retailer, we would link your site to National Retail Federation, or if you were a restaurant, we would link your site to a trusted restaurant review site.

Link Building is a fundamental part of any SEO package. Search engines monitor the links pointing to your site. Gathering trusted links to your domain is a natural progression and any website that suddenly accumulates hundreds or thousands of links in a very short time frame will be flagged for underhand tactics and possibly put under review with a ban from the search engines being the favoured outcome. Not a good business strategy.

TIME SCALES
The time taken achieve good page one results differs according to how competitive your industry is, and anyone or company that guarantees you top ten results within a short time-frame be extremely cautious about employing them to carry out SEO work for you. However, If you have an uncompetitive keyword or phrase, then you can normally see results in about 6-12 weeks, if on the other hand you are in a fiercely competitive industry then it can be anywhere between 4-12 months.

ONGOING WORK
Everything spoken about here is not something that we do on one occasion, but is completely and utterly ongoing. It's best to see SEO or Internet Marketing as a pro-active approach. The guidelines are always changing. What may work well today may not tomorrow. There are other approaches that we have not even touched upon in this article such as viral marketing, blogging, email marketing, podcasts, video marketing and social media marketing. The web is a fluid market, if you stand still then your competitors will pass you by.

About the Author

Paul Steven is a SEO Consultant with 360innovate a leading Web Design Glasgow Company.