Manchester SEO consultants - Search Engine Optimisation Manchester

SEO consultancy and web marketing specialists in Manchester, Lancashire

SEO consultancy or Internet marketing is usually considered to be a specialist service the goal of which is to reach the first page of Google and the other search engines that matter. However, it is perhaps better to think of SEO consultancy and Internet marketing as a service which aims to provide better and more relevant information about your products and services than your competitors. Often, web sites owners feel that they are competing against Google when they are striving to get to the top of this search engine when, in fact, the Google rankings are the tree that you climb in competition with other businesses selling the same products and services as yourself.

This allows us to see straight away, that the competition is not static, your competitors are striving for pole position as well as yourself, and the question that needs to be asked is not

'how do I get a first place position in Google?'

but

'how do I provide Google with better information than that provided by my competitors?'

You need to know how good these competing web pages are, and you need to ensure that your SEO not only does enough to sneak past them in the rankings, but enough to ensure that there is a safe margin of quality, relevance and importance between your web pages and those of your closest competitors in the SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Pages).

SEO MANCHESTER TESTIMONIALS:

“I'll tell everybody how good you are”

Steve Gunn, Gunn's Cleaning (SEO Newcastle)

“You have done a great job”

Simon Gerrard, Gerrard's Cleaning (SEO Manchester)

“You're a bloody genius. I've been so busy recently (all from the website) that I've barely had time to think let alone write any more copy for an extra page as I intended.”

John Brennan, J.B. Landscapes (SEO Leeds)

more SEO testimonials

Moreover, if you want an SEO campaign aimed at a national or global market, then you usually need an ongoing campaign to ensure your continuing success and growth. Even if you hold first place, there is no guarantee that someone else's SEO campaign won't push you back down the rankings if you don't invest in staying competitive. This means engaging in an SEO campaign as a long-term venture, and not just thinking about how well you are doing at the moment, but staying in there for the long haul as well. For web sites competing for local markets, the competition is often much weaker and you may get by with a one-off service, but even here it is sometimes the case that fierce competition requires you to keep your eye on the ball.

Looked at from this perspective we can also see why no responsible SEO consultant should really ever give concrete guarantees or attempt to provide an exact roadmap of where you will rank in the search engines and when. There are simply too many factors beyond the control of an SEO consultant for it to be prudent to make such claims. Search engines can change their algorithms, competitors can improve their own SEO, and ocassionally SEO customers themselves might do something which gets them penalised in the search engines. This said, good onsite SEO can often provide some insulation against changes to search engine algorithms, rankings can go up as well as down as a consequence of such changes, and if you think of your SEO campaign as a continual improvement project, then you no longer need to worry too much about how much improvement is brought by initial onsite optimisation or backlink campaigns, you can work your way up the rankings in a solid, whitehat and reliable manner rather than paying out a lot of money for one-off, and sometimes short term, gains.

If you want to find out what it is possible to do for your website and how much it will cost, email your website address and contact details to

seo@foursquareinnovations.co.uk

or call 0844 493 3699, and we will give you a free quote.

If you want to find out a bit more about SEO, read on...

The off-site part of organic SEO is link building, or finding other websites that will link to you. A good backlink to your site is one that has a decent level of importance and a high degree of relevance (i.e. its content is contextually related to, or similar to, that of your own webpage). The text used in the backlink is also relevant, if your link text looks to have little or nothing to do with the topic of the page linked to, then this will signpost a low level of relevancy. How many quality backlinks you need really depends upon how many your fiercest competitors have and upon whether the volume of backlinks they have is pretty static or whether they are engaged regularly in obtaining new ones.

The onsite optimisation element of your organic SEO campaign might include:

• Website architecture - deployment, structure and naming of folders and files, all deployed strategically to promote your web site on the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.
• Metadata organisation - the way in which metadata is employed to crucial to the success of your organic SEO campaign and can make the difference between a visible site and a successful site. Not of lot of web professionals understand exactly how to do this, and there is even dispute in the industry as to whether metadata even matters at all.
• Key phrase placement - placing relevant content where it will have most impact and relevance, in order to show search engine spiders which key phrases are contextually significant.
• Improve the logical structure and hierarchy of your HTML markup, effectively signposting important content using semantic HTML and further ensuring that relevant copy is recognised as such by the search engine spiders.
• Key phrase density - harnessing under-used and neglected HTML elements and attributes to boost your keyword density without impacting detrimentally upon the design or appearance.
• Search engine penalty avoidance - using only white hat SEO strategies, considered honest and proper by major search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo.
• Domain name and subdomain selection - your domain name makes a significant impact on your keyword relevance as it is interpreted by the search engines (for new builds only).
• SEO innovation - every website is unique and presents its own specific opportunities for search engine marketing. Spotting and implementing these requires a keen eye for detail and as we get to know your website over time, more of these opportunities can be harnessed.
• and a couple of secret SEO ingredients.

If you are looking for a professional SEO campaign competing across the UK or worldwide then it is likely that you will require both onsite SEO and a substantial link building campaign. One way to appreciate why this is the case, is to think of your onsite SEO as providing the relavancy of your website, while the link building lends your website importance. Importance + relevancy = a website that will rank highly in the major search engines.

(There are also elements of link building which add relevancy to your site, and it is important to get the right keywords in your link text; however, the onsite SEO is where the more involved work that contributes to your website's relevancy takes place.)

In order to be eligible for the localised SEO Price Plan, we do insist that your website first undergoes an SEO feasibility study to check for things such as web design flaws which may undermine the viability of any SEO campaign without remedial work. This costs a nominal £30.00 plus VAT.

An SEO feasibility study will enable us to provide an overview of the following:

1. identify whether the design, structure and architecture of your site is compatible with search engine optimisation techniques
2. assess your scope of keywords and key phrases
3. assess the passthrough rate of your primary key terms
4. assess the competition
5. identify any potenital visitor retention or conversion issues with your web site or ecommerce site

To speak to an SEO professional call 0844 493 3699

Useful SEO Information:

Multimedia presentation: SEO: an integrated approach (presentation opens in a new window)

SEO beginners, information and help

SEO training for onsite optimisation

Internet marketing tips - onsite SEO (downloadable pdf opens in a new Window)

Find out what search engines see when they look at your site with iWebTool Spider View