Jackson Ellis

All ORCA websites are designed to be search engine friendly, however, here Steve Elles, our Operations Director, gives you some great advice about getting the basics right when it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO).

[1]: What do you think is the most important aspect of a website’s design when it comes to search engine optimisation? Are there any hints and tips you could outline?
Depth, clarity and usability. A website must have a clear focus as to what the customer is going to achieve. I believe that Search Engine algorithms* are designed to think like human beings on behalf of human beings. Design your website with a human being in mind, drop the physics and get selling.
*an algorithm is a sequence of instructions used to make a calculation. It’s a computer program! In this case a program to decide where to list your website on a search engine.

[2]: There are thousands of companies that purport to offer search engine optimisation services. Can you offer any advice on what someone should look for when they are buying these services for the first time?
Results and a client list complete with genuine testimonials – if they’re any good, they’ll encourage you to contact their clients. Good SEO doesn’t happen overnight. It is a careful process that must be monitored and adjusted. Depending on your business you will need to decide what size of fishing net to use. Maybe you don’t need a big fishing net, maybe you need to practice fly fishing. Sorry for the fishing analogy but you get the point. There are many different strategies to be employed and you need the right tool for the job.

[3]: Meta tags and keywords are not the only things that the search engines spiders look at when they crawl a website. Can you talk about other aspects of a website that need to be optimised to ensure maximum exposure on Google and other search engines?
Much of this is speculation. Other than the people who write the algorithms no-one really knows. If you aim to build a “quality” website that a helpful Search Engine thinks, “Hey, these look like the kind of guys this person is looking for!”, then you are approaching the project correctly. Does your website leave any unanswered questions? Does your website offer the customer an exceptional online experience? Does the website hold the answers to potential Search Engine queries? What we do know about Search Engines is that they like websites to be accessible to everyone. Is the site Standards Compliant?  Make sure your website earns you brownie points. Customers do business with good quality websites and Search Engines know this.