Transdata International Ltd.
Transdata International Ltd. - search engines optimisation and marketing (SEO, SEM) company.
Business development and  internet communications company.
   
 
 

Search engine optimisation methodology

Importance of SEO
SEO methodology
SEO jargon buster

We provide services of optimising web sites / web pages for better search engine rankings. If you've turned up to this page then you are in some way interested in the search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). This page provides a detailed explanation on our standard methodology and procedures.

SEO proposal

We can help you by inspecting your website code and provide suggestions on how to optimise it for the major search engines for selected keywords and phrases; research and assess your competition online and provide suggestions and strategy on how position your company among your competition.

We can help you building and managing your search engine marketing campaigns.

These efforts should result in increase of visibility of your site for seleted search phrases and, sebsequently, visitor traffic in.

Basics and our approach.

  • No sites like each other. The same remedy cannot be used to fix different problems.
  • Nobody can guarantee top search engine rankings unless they own the search engine.
  • We review each web site both manually and using various software tools, benchmark and, depending on findings, advise a custom set of actions.
  • We focus our optimisation technique on providing a reach and relevant content, correcting and adjusting all necessary components of a web page / site.
  • We try to keep the design/appearance intact where possible.
  • We advise web site owners to undertake a route of search engines marketing (SEM), subject to available budget.
  • All proceedings are documented at each stage.

Principals and procedures

If you wish to talk to us about your website with a view to contract our search engine optimisation services, first you need to decide what exactly are you trying to achieve: what key words/phrases are you targeting, what kind of audience are you targeting. And the rest falls into the following routine:

Principals and procedures of the search engine optimisation. Read detailed description below.

In details:

1. Collect statistics / Benchmark.

Client shall submit the web site for review.
If Client has a sufficient web statistics analytic tracking software/service this will be used for collecting and analysing site access data, trends, usage and exit points. For more accurate data we must collect data for as long period of time as possible (at least a week).

The website performance shall be benchmarked and documented at this stage. This is necessary in order compare results of the SEO campaign with pre-campaign position and in order to show improvements at the end of the service to prove investment.

2. Audit the site.

The following areas shall be inspected:

  1. Code consistency. Basic errors in the code will affect how search engines will treat the site.
  2. Broken links. These may stop search engines to crawl/index the site further.
  3. Tags. Items like <title>, <alt>, <!-- --> are taken in to account by search engines and should be present. These should contain important keywords.
  4. Meta-tags. There should be present and contain important keywords following certain rules.
  5. Research most popular keywords. Often companies target keywords/phrases that are not the most frequently entered on the web. Finding out and targeting right keywords/phrases will increase number of visits.
  6. Keyword density. This is a fine art of search engine optimisation. The right proportion of keywords on the page will influence rankings. This relates not only to body text, but also to all other invisible elements (tags, styles), even to images names, link names and URLs!
  7. Design features. It is important:
    • a. how easy it is to find information on the website;
    • b. how easy it is to navigate the website;
    • c. how quick the site’s response is;
    • d. how aesthetically appealing the website is.
  8. Dynamic content indexing. Search engines are not indexing dynamic pages well in certain conditions. If particular products/services featured on the website are accessed only via search facility or generated dynamically these should be considered to included onto site maps or the ‘integrated doorway pages’ (static introductory pages) should be created for them.
  9. Analyse competition. Strong and weak point of the direct competition shall be analysed in order either:
    • a. To adopt the strong points;
    • b. To capitalise on weak points;
    • c. To improve the sites and make it better than competition;
    • d. To make site “different”, interesting, compare to competition.
  10. Target audience. The target audience / area / market segment to be defined. The site shall be evaluated if it appeals to the target audience.
  11. ROI for current ad-campaigns. The collected statistics shall indicate the effective and non-effective campaigns (affiliated sites, mailing campaigns, banner ads etc), as well as problem areas on the website itself (perhaps users do not like to be forced for long process of registration, or even “Buy now” button is hard to find on the page, therefore people are leaving the site, etc. etc.

3. Advice / Report.

We shall identify problem areas and depending on finding shall provide advice to take one or multiple actions as follows:

  1. Code consistency. Check and correct the code.
  2. Broken links. Check and correct links.
  3. Tags. Check and add/correct tags.
  4. Meta-tags. Check and add/correct tags.
  5. Research most popular keywords. Create a list of keywords/phrases to be targeted.
  6. Keyword density. Optimise the existing pages for “search engine friendliness” and keywords without (if possible) having to change the design. It may be that addresses of some pages will have to be revised, as well as the whole addressing scheme shall be changed. This may go as far as purchasing a new domain name containing 1 or 2 the most important keywords and place the site there.
  7. Design features. The design to be revised if necessary based on psychology/profile of an average visitor, corrections to ergonomics and the proposed improvements to usability.
  8. Dynamic content indexing. Usually for 1-2 important pages that are generated dynamically placing direct link on the homepage or site map will be enough. But for dozens and hundreds of products / offers it is better to have a dedicated introductory static (html) pages, called doorway pages. Some SEO professionals will say that “doorway pages” are no-go area. And they would be right! But we are talking about the integrated doorway pages that are placed on the site and interlinked as normal static pages, with partial content so it does not duplicate the real dynamic pages. This is a proven strategy. Here is the explanation of what it is:
    • This is a typical structure of an average web site, with some static and dynamic content. As you can see - all pages are naturally (bi-directionally) interlinked.
    • This is the example of a typical “doorway page” that can be identified by search engines. The main indicator here is unidirectional linkage.
    • Our integrated doorway pages are: built highly optimised, based on a template and the database information for each individual product; interlinked (certain code to be placed into existing web pages for that).
    • Therefore at the end we have naturally interlinked static index-able web pages encapsulating the whole website, where each of these new pages is highly optimised for specific product.
    • The array of such pages can be automatically re-generated at every 3am, or every week, or every hour, if necessary.
  9. Analyse competition. This will be used for evaluating design and/or target changes.
  10. Target audience. This will define and drive the advertising campaigns.
  11. ROI for current ad-campaigns. Successful campaigns shall be retained. New campaigns to be launched and monitored. The following can be considered:
    • Banner advertising.
    • Links exchange.
    • Pay-Per-Click campaigns.
    • Include external RSS feed.
    • To become a RSS feed.
    • Create an online forum.
    • Collect user feedback.
    • Email campaigns.
    • Featured articles.
    • Submission to directories and portals (this also increases the ‘links-in’ count)
    • Paid Web Site Submission.

4. Implement the proposed changes.

The Client shall study the report and approve further work.

We shall commence and complete the work within the specified period of time (subject to a identified scope).

5. Collect statistics / Review.

Shortly after the completion of work and applying changes we shall commence collecting statistics. This will take some period of time and will indicate improvements in visibility and/or conversion.

The collected data shall be used as proof of effective investment.

6. Report.

Full project documentation, together with the latest statistical data shall be submitted to the client for review.

It is recommended that the site be monitored on a monthly basis in order to address natural progression of markets, target audience, effectiveness of campaigns.

It is recommended that we monitor competition in order to address changes to their strategy and presentation.

     

Transdata International Ltd. SEO company, Edinburgh Scotland. © Copyright 1998-2006