SEO ...It is THE buzz word (or rather acronym) at the moment, not many people know what it means and there are hundreds, if not thousands of businesses or people out there telling you that they can do it for you and put you top of the rankings!

There isn't anyone that we've come across who doesn't say I want to be top of the Google rankings, it's like fame and fortune ... everyone wants it but it seldom comes without hard work.

So we're going to tell you in plain simple language what it means and why it's NOT 'the 1 thing' that will make your site famous but rather 1 of many.

Search Engine Optimisation is defined in wikipedia as being  "Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results."  This by mere definition means that the seo is dependent on 'other' things to improve your rankings, and rankings  to help you better understand what these things are we thought it best to list some of them below

-  Site descriptions, keywords and metatags
-  Text, there's nothing a search engine enjoys more than relevant text
-  Internal linking, linking your text internally to other relevant pages within the site
-  HTML code - your code should be clean and compliant and should enhance SEO rather than hamper it
-  Design - clear links, menus, titles and tags will also enhance your rankings
-  External links - one way links into your site are better than two way links

So the list is pretty long but these are the main things that you should look at when implementing a SEO strategy for your website.  Now you may think that well that's great once I've done that I'm done!  Regrettably not.  If you are really serious about your website's rankings you're going to have to do many of the above things regularly or at least review them and update them regularly, at the very minimum once a week.

Consider that in any business you need to spend time marketing and selling your business, but for some reason people who have a website as a main selling tool think that once it is up on the world wide web they don't need to do anything else people should just come along and find them amongst millions of other sites.  If you expect your website to deliver business then you have to pay attention to it and treat it like an important part of your business.

The easiest way to get your SEO strategy right it to get it right from the start, from the time you build and develop the website.  Before getting a web designer to build your site, check their knowledge of SEO and ask them how they would build your site with that in mind.  Doing a few key things right from the start will make all the difference to your rankings and your wallet!

A word of WARNING ... be VERY careful in engaging with someone who sends you an email saying they will do SEO for you, we cannot tell you how many people we know that have wasted their money or in worst cases lost their money as well as some who do more damage than good as stuffing keywords into a site can have you black listed by search engines.  At the same time there are some who know what they are talking about but get them to tell you some things and get some referrals before you pay them a cent.