Let’s look at Google search, there are other ways to direct traffic to your website but Search is still the most common and Google has 90% of the UK search market.

1 Get found

• Organic Search-You want to appear towards the top of page 1 of the organic results for your search term. People will very rarely go past page 1 when searching.  How do you do this? Rather by conducting a search engine optimisation campaign or targeting a niche market that the competition is weak in.
• Google local business- Register it is free, quick and simple to do. It is highly effective and is the source of many of our customers website traffic for the first few months of their website going live
• Adwords- Lots of people are worried about the effectiveness of Adwords, wasting money on clicks that come to nothing, competitors clicking and wasting their budget etc.  Virtually every major company in the world use Adwords many buy their own name, if these companies, who have full marketing departments and measure the effectiveness of every piece of marketing they do use Adwords, then this is a convincing endorsement to me! My advice, get a professional company to set up your campaign and monitor it closely.

2 Click Through Rate
Once you appear on page one you still need to actually be clicked on to get the customer to your website. By targeting organic, local business, and sponsored searches you are increasing your chances of having multiple listings on the first page. Multiple listings obviously multiply your chances of being clicked.

• Organic- Make sure your title tags and meta description are formatted well, descriptive and inviting to encourage click through.
• Google Local Business – Fill out as much information as possible! Where appropriate opening times, payment methods, photo’s etc. Try to get customers to leave reviews.
• Adwords- Follow Google’s advice on how to structure your advert, this advice will make a big difference to you click through rate.  

3 Conversion
What is a conversion? That is what you need to decide when constructing the web page! If it’s an enquiry via E-mail or phone these need to be in clear view with a call to action I.E 0800 000 000 CALL NOW! If it’s a purchase the checkout procedure needs to be obvious and simple to do. The page needs to have a simple clear message if people cannot find what they are looking for quickly and easily they will go somewhere else!

4 Monitor, Analyse and Adjust
Google offer Analytics free of charge. This is an accurate and comprehensive tool for monitoring the visits to your website. Analytics can show you how many visits you’ve had each day, how long they stayed how many pages were viewed, what search term was used to find you, bounce rate etc etc. Your website should be a constantly evolving and adapting entity. Monitor the results in analytics and make changes where appropriate to get more work from your website!

Keyword

Choosing a keyword or search term is the number 1 thing to do when planning an optimisation campaign.  Picking your battle at this stage can make success more likely. Look for a popular long tail searches (easier said than done!).

Top Tip: Don't worry too much about Meta tag Keywords. Google has not used this for a few years now.

Title Tag

Title tags appear at the very top of the screen when you are on a website. They are also the bold blue line of text that appears in search engine result page.  Try to keep the title tag to 9-12 words for optimum results. Use the most important keywords first. Good title tags can be enough to get page one listings for lots of un competitive local search terms.

To tip: Don't try and target too many keywords on anyone page. All this does is dilute relevancy.

Meta Description

The description should be 18-24 words - it usually appears on the search engine results page under the hyperlink text. It should be a keyword rich summary of the web page, . It should be descriptive and compelling to invite more clicks

Top Tip: Make sure you have a different meta description for every page on your site.

Links

This has to be the most powerful factor for determining search engine positioning.  One way Links are needed from multiple relevant websites using the appropriate keyword in the anchor text.

Top Tip: Don’t bother with reciprocal links! One way links are what Google are looking for.

Content

This is the most obvious and often over looked particularly by people obsessed with optimisation.  Relevant, unique, interesting copy  that is keyword rich is the most straight forward way to obtain good search results.  The whole idea of search engines is to return the most relevant website for the search term used. Having a website with unique relevant content ensures this.

Top tip: Don’t fill your page with spam! Don’t just repeat keywords over and over.

We first went out to see Steve Ruck from Eiger Vehicle Leasing in March 2010. EVL have been going for over 11 years and in that time have managed to build up excellent relationships in their industry. They are able to get a wide range of vehicles at very competitive prices.

Steve wanted a simple to use professional looking website that shows what EVL is about and can be found. We have produced a new site using ASP.NET MVC 2 which allows Steve to update the content and current monthly vehicle offers with ease which are also published as an RSS feed, as well as take enquiries for quotes.

EVL can do really good deals on BMW's and with a central location in the midlands are ideally situated to supply up and down the country. Bright Fox are aiming for page one listings for 'Lease BMW' for Steve. Can we achieve it? watch this space!!

http://www.eigervehicleleasing.co.uk/

Microsoft Office 2010 contains 'Office Web Apps',  analysts believe the web offering is a response to Google. Do you think Microsoft are upset that the top search on Bing is people looking for Google?

Google are actively going after Office 2010 potential customers. We have used Google docs at Brightfox since we started and find it an valuable tool for our team to share word processing and spreadsheet documents with each other. Can Google knock Microsoft off the top spot for Business Software??

Welcome to the Bright Fox Solutions Blog. We've been planning it for some time, but with all things its best to just get started! Hopefully you find the posts informative and get to learn a bit about Bright Fox, our industry and what we find interesting.