So now the site is built and hosted and can be seen by the outside world. But how much of the outside world can find it? One of the best ways to become highly visible is to achieve prominence on the search engine results page. The key here is to be prominent for the search terms that people are actually entering and are relevant to your site.
Search Engine Optimisation
The first path to search engine prominence is through search engine optimisation (SEO). This is the process of using ethical techniques such as keyword research and quality link building, to achieve high rankings on the results pages. In doing so, your site will build reputation and credibility. The benefits will continue to accrue because of the organic nature of the process.
As part of the design and development service EGN will include some basic SEO to ensure that your site’s key words are in the right places and in the right proportions relative to the rest of the content (no spamming). In addition, the content will also be optimised for relevance and quality. As an optional extra the service can be extended into an ongoing process to include more in-depth key word analysis and to start building high-quality, relevant in-bound links to your site.
Pay Per Click Advertising Management
If you want to get a prominent placement on the results pages straight away with minimum effort, then Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising may be the way to go. PPC is the process of placing a relevant ad on a search results page and paying for each click on the ad that will lead though to a destination page on your website. The features include immediate placements, specifically targeting a qualified market, complete budgetary control, performance tracking and ad control.
But it’s easy to waste a lot of money if you don’t do it properly. It’s vital to find the best key words, get you ad wording right, make your landing pages compelling, monitor your campaigns closely and keep control of your budget. If you’d like to go down this route, I can advise and help.
Analytics
Put tracking software on your web pages to monitor their performance. This will tell you which pages are popular and which are not. It will help you to make strategic and tactical decisions about how to get more from your site. Tracking software can produce some very detailed information about visitor numbers, locations, traffic sources, content viewed and goals.
The most popular tracking software is Google Analytics, but if you would rather have something where the traffic information is stored on your own database (rather than Google’s), then I can recommend Piwik as an alternative.
