We think search engines are brilliant. Understandably however search engine owners want to give their users the best and most relevant possible information – very few of us really want to read on much past page 2, and mostly we expect to find what we’re looking for on the very first page that comes up.

To make sure they can do this the engines send out spiders or robots (sometimes called ‘bots’) to read through a site and check the quality and detail of the information, and ease of access, plus various aspects of accessibility and compliance. To coin a phrase search engines are ‘tough but fair’, and quite rightly so – none of us wants to waste time clicking through to sites that don’t give us what we want.

Once you understand how search engines work you need to work out what to do with your site all the relevant information is presented in their ‘best practice’ way so it is as easy as possible to assimilate. It’s a lot to do with knowing which words and phrases to use and it’s called ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ of a site.

A large part of SEO is knowing which terms to run your SEO strategy against. Increasingly at BlueNet we find we are getting down to the level of ‘SEO-ing’ individual pages on a web site against specific parts of a site’s offering in an attempt to get a site in the Top 10 on any relevant results page . In more general terms we have the mindset and skill set to do the following:

• Analyse your existing web pages for SEO potential
• Discuss initial key word choices
• Report your positions on search engines for key words you are targeting
• Track site visitors and see which keywords they used
• Submit an initial ranking report for all major search engines
• Provide a customised key word analysis
• Create targeted optimised META tags, title and keyword descriptions
• Add a robots.txt file so ‘bots’ and spiders can crawl the site with ease
• Submit your site to the top search engines and directories
• Provide search engine submission confirmation reports and email and phone assistance
• Provide regular detailed ranking reports on site performance
• Follow-up on submissions to keep your site in the spotlight

Research suggests that a Top 10 ranking on a major search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN will drive more and better targeted traffic than expensive banner advertising campaigns. Best of all, while SEO may have a longer lead time to ‘kick in’, it is altogether much cheaper.