SEO stands for search engine optimisation it’s the process of optimising your website for a set of keywords in the hope you will improve your search engine ranking. If you know anything about SEO you will probably be aware that each search engine uses an algorithm to rank sites. This algorithm is a guarded secret by the search engines so you don’t know exactly how to manipulate them for your websites gain.

Although the exact recipe for ultimate rankings is unknown there are best practice standards and techniques that if you follow them you will begin to see improvements in your websites rankings. SEO involves what is known as onsite and offsite optimisation.

On site optimisation

On site optimisation is about changing elements on your website to improve your rankings. The main on site changes include things like making sure you have the correct title tags on each page, adding meta tag information to each page, adding alt and title tags to your images, using headers on your page, using the right amount of content and using the correct keyword density of your chosen search terms.

There are many other technical things which webmasters do to improve rankings which are sadly not adhered to by many web designers. Quite often web designers will build a website to look as the client wishes but will not take consideration of search engine optimisation. I have seen so many times websites not living up to their full potential because of technical obstructions.

Quite alarmingly it is not only the coding of a website that can affect the sites rankings but also the domain, or URL, and the server it is hosted on. The domain of a website is a factor which is considered by the search engines during ranking. An older domain will have more authority then a newly registered domain.

Offsite optimisation

When performing SEO it is not only the tasks you perform to your site which affects its position in the search engine. Off site optimisation includes building links to your site through commenting, forum posting, article submission, directory submission, RSS syndication and any other way you can find for getting a quality link to your site. One thing I would definitely avoid is link farms or link exchanges, unless the website who you want to exchange with is highly relevant and of excellent quality with a high page rank or gets very relevant traffic which would be ideal for your website.

With so many things affecting your search engine rankings what kind of guarantees are there? Unfortunately there are no guarantees with SEO. This means for many companies SEO is not financially viable. This is a shame as SEO is the highest return on investment form of advertising there is and the one which puts people searching for your products or services in front of you.

Although there are no guarantees as to what position you will appear in the search engine if you follow best practice SEO guidelines and do not engage in any black hat seo activity your search engine rankings should continue to improve over time. With SEO there are no quick wins as you have to gain credibility and trust to prove to the search engines your website is the most relevant.

How can you take the risk out of SEO?

One way to remove the risk from SEO is to work with an SEO agency who offers pay for performance SEO this is where the agency works on your website optimisation but you only pay for results. This form of SEO shows you the SEO company you are working with are confident of their SEO skills and are not hiding behind the popular slogan "There are no guarantees in SEO". The risk is taken on by the SEO agency.