I am classic car enthusiast and purely by accident I noticed a photograph in a recent classic car magazine (Practical Classics Feb. 2008), which showed the high street of my hometown (Stockton on Tees), back in 1965. The question of the photo was this, “spot the foreign car”. From about 100 cars shown on this photo, we were only able to find one car made outside of the UK, and in this case it was a Volkswagen Beetle.

It is a perfect example of how business has changed in the UK over the last 40 years or so. Who would have though back then, that 40 years later the picture would be totally different and we would be looking for the car built in the UK, or even worse, find the car that is owned by a UK company.

So What Has This To Do With SEO?

I find it astonishing to still find businesses that think the way they do business today will be the way they do business in the future. I am not saying the Internet would have saved the UK motor industry, but I am saying that back in 1965, the motor industry was probably as complacent as many businesses are today about what their customers would want from them in the future years.

Today you may not be interested in the Internet or being top of the search engines, but do you know whether this will be the deciding factor of your business success in the future?

Here Are Some Questions To Ask

Is it possible that all the widgets you sell may be bought abroad from a competitor and not from you, because your customers were able to find another supplier online?

Is it possible that all the widgets you sell may be bought nationally from a competitor and not from you, because your customers were able to find your competition online?

Is it possible that the your UK market size of your sector will be not be big enough in the future to sustain your business; so would you need to sell abroad?

Is it possible that your customers will no longer need to buy locally and will shop around nationally or internationally to find the best deal for them?

Those who look to how they intend to take the their business forward rather than trying to keep what they have got are likely to be the long term winners.

Here Is The Bad News! A website By Itself Is No Longer Enough.

You can switch a website on, but you cannot switch good Search Engine results on. There is a natural timeline to all sectors to get to the first page and some, even now can take months if not years to get there. If it was that easy, we would all be in Barbados now on the beach.

SEO takes a lot of hard work by someone or a company that knows what it is doing and is prepared to tell you the truth about SEO and not false promises.

So what will the future years bring to you?

Another SEO Tip

After you have researched your keywords or search terms, make sure you name your pages names after them. For example if you sell purple elephants, then name your page “purple-elephants.htm” etc.

Most websites consist of a page that is named services or products. This is too generic and does nothing to help the search engine find out what you site is about, in order to rank it correctly.

That is it folks See you later

It is often easy to forget that others not in the same business just don’t get the lingo, “Just what does SEO mean?” and whilst I often get passionate about SEO, I sometimes forget there are many that have yet to discover what this essential Internet marketing profession is all about and why it is becoming the most important profession for online businesses.

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation although the Americans spell it Optimization and it is used to ensure your website is shown high on the search engine results.

So What Is A Search Engine?

The three main search engines are Google, Yahoo and Live (was known as MSN). These act like online directories. First you visit their homepage, where you will find a search box, you enter what you are searching for into this box, press “go” or enter and so this search engine will show you the 10 most relevant results for that search term.
As search engines become more complicated and cleverer, the chances of anyone needing to go to the second page for their desired results is becoming less and less. It is estimated that up to 90% of all Internet users will use a search engine to find what they are looking for., very few of them go beyond the first page of results, if you are not there, your website may never be found.

Search Engine Optimisation is the skill of giving the search engines what they want for a search, so they will show your website hopefully on the first page of their results, so you get the visitor and you get the business. A SEO professional knows what these search engines need to deliver the credibility and to ensure good results. An amateur looks for quick wins.

Lets give you an example

I am a part owner of an internet business that is currently number one Google UK for the search term “Car Parts” and “Used Car Parts”, this position means our business gets 4500 unique visitors a day which deliver up to 1400 leads for our customers every day. Compare this to 12 months ago, during the development of the site, where we were at position 30 and only delivered 70 visitors a day and 10 leads for our customers every day. To use paid advertising on Google would cost us around 50p a click, which is over £2000 a day to get the same amount of visitors. Had we not made SEO a priority to our business and understood how many people would search for our services, we just would not be in business now.

Search Engine Optimisation Is Constantly Changing

Millions of pages are added to the Internet every day, so in order to deal with the increasing size, how the search engines deal with the results change constantly. Many SEO practises that were popular 12 months ago are now out of date and some that were popular 24 months ago could now get your site banned and removed from a search engine.

There Are No Quick Wins

Every type of spam technique or quick win solution has been found out and a filter applied to take care of it. So never believe anyone who says he knows a quick way of delivering results. There is a natural timeline to every website, try to speed this process up and the opposite occurs. A filter is applied and your SEO campaign goes backwards until you re-do everything.

Why Is SEO Different To Web Design?

Good web design does include SEO, such as how well all the pages link together etc. But most web designers are in fact Graphic Artists who’s objective is to make your website as visually appealing as possible. Having lots of graphics, moving graphics and little text may look good, but does nothing to help the search engines discover what your website is about. Search engines cannot read images. The Internet is littered with fantastic looking websites that are never found and there are also basic looking, text rich websites that have made businesses and their owners millions. In my training seminars, I compare this to a 1000ft billboard full of colour photos placed in the desert or a 10ft board written in black and white situated in Piccadilly Circus. Which on would make more money for you?
I would take the Piccadilly Circus every time, plenty of traffic, plenty of money spending customers.
Bye For Now

In the 21st century those who use the internet expect more than a few words and a few pictures and so the role of a web designer has moved away from an online colour catalogue to websites that actually are part of the business model and deliver solutions to help the user and business.

Common basic example of this is the ability to take orders online using shopping carts, automated email responses, online contact forms, reviews and database applications that allow multiple examples of images or pages.

Web Design Versus Programming

To the average person in the street, there is no difference to these two disciplines, but those in the business know there is a real difference between what requires a programmer and web design. Web design businesses are now, more and more being approached to deliver programming solutions not aware that the process is different to web design and so web design and media companies are being forced to employ programmers to deliver these larger projects, often being taken away from the artistic part of the business they set their enterprise up for.

Outsource Your Programming: A Solution For You

A solution to this is to employ a programmer that you can trust and talk through the project as and when you need one. We can offer that service to web designers and media businesses, who can attain a quote from ourselves to the programming work and apply that to the design work you will do after the programming is completed.

Let us do what we are good at and you stick to what you are good at could be the right solution to allow your enterprise to quote for projects you would normally avoid or need to employ full time for. This means

Of course even if you do employ a programmer, often the balance between programming time and design time may mean one employee waiting for another.

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