Ever wondered why you're not reaching the dizzy heights of the first page of Google?

You can develop the most stunning and attractive business website of all your competitors. You can employ the best usability experts, professional photographers and web developers money can buy. However, if you're business isn’t on the first or second page of Google, then really you may as well go into hiding!

Unfortunately, consumers and business peoples attention span is zero these days. Expectancy is for immediate, quick and relevant results. If people can't get what they want within a few minutes of looking, mainly because we're too busy or lazy to keep going, they simply go elsewhere. It's not that search engine users don't value what your website has to offer, it's just that if you're not on the first or second page of Google, then users can't be bothered to delve any deeper.


Nearly 53% of us change our search terms, and/or search engine after not finding our prefered result on the first page and only aorund 10% of us actually bother going past the third page.

So you need to think about your website as your shop-window to your business. Like any shop-window you want to have the most attractive on the high-street. Your aim is to catch the eye of passing visitors and entice them into your store. It's the same principal with any website, you need to get yourself noticed ahead of your competitors on the Web.

Get thinking about how you can create that attraction. With the help of some good search engine optimisation (SEO), you can start to embellish your shop-window to enhance your visibility in search engines.

Some things you can start looking at are:

• Keyword Research - keyword research and competitor review analysis - think about how will people find your website?
• Content Optimisation - review your web website content. Does it include the words people will include in a search?
• Current Ranking - benchmark your website to view your current search engine position.
• Website Compliance - does your website comply with accessibility and coding standards?
• Search Engine Submissions - create major search engine accounts and manually submit your website, including a site map and robots.txt file.

But these are just for starters and that's why we include all of the above methods in our Oxford Web SEO 3-month SEO Starter Package.  We recommend this to anyone who is actively seeking better search engine ranking results for their website. 

Our SEO starter package is a good foundation for getting better search engine results for your website. Although there’s no secret formula to getting your site on the first page of Google, we aim to improve the quality of your website through a variety of SEO services.


You need to begin polishing your shop-window now if you want to get ahead of your competitiors and start appearing on that first page of Google.

New videos for the Oxford Web SEO YouTube Channel

We recently updated our YouTube Channel and uploaded some new presentation videos from one of our seminars entitled - 'So you want to learn how to improve your website Google rankings?'

We've pulled out some snippets from the seminar, looking at the main areas we should all focus on when looking to make our websites visible in search engines such as Google and Bing. For example, this edited highlight explains what organic search engine optimisation is all about, and how SEO is a device for making your website visible in search engines.



Video is a great content addition to your website. It encourages engagement and provides interactivity on your website. Content optimisation is no longer just about the written word and including not only YouTube vids, but podcasts, quick polls, quizzes or RSS feeds all help to enhance your website visitor experience and hopefully that of the search engines that come to visit your website.

If you're interested in finding out more about how to improve the visibililty of your website in search engines, then please contact Tracy Walker to discuss your content strategy.

How Exciting is Your Website Content?

I'm sure that you've heard this many times before, but your website is nothing within interesting, valuable, quality, interactive and above all up-to-date content.

If you have, but haven't yet reviewed your website with this in mind, then you really need to take action. It's so true - if you want to increase your visitor numbers and your websites visibility in search engines, then take a good look at your content.

Content sells - it sells you, your organisation, your products and services. It's about creating content that people will want to read, find engaging and want to share; as well of course as making it search engine friendly and readable.

Start off with thinking about a logical approach to the information you want to share. How easy as a visitor is it to find details about you. Make content clear, precise and to the point. Make sure that you focus on and include the most important keywords and phrases in the first paragraph of each web page. Look at your tone of voice - just be yourself and remember to write as if you were just talking to someone.

Content however, is no longer just about the written word. It's about providing interactive content, such as Flash, video and audio that will engage your website audience. Get people to engage with you, communicate about issues and just generally network with each other and your organisation. Using tools for business, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can all help to enhance both your websites and companies visibility.

SEO is all about continually updating and monitoring your website. Reviewing the content, creating interesting articles, investing time in posting to Twitter and Facebook. It need lots of work to make your website a success and to continue to keep your organisation visible in search engines.

'Content Creation' - thupr Social Media Week Event

Content on the Web is no longer just the 'written word'. You now have to take into account other media, such as video and audio, as well as the power of blogs and social networking sites. All of these are key to providing quality content on your website.

The thupr 'Content Creation' event, part of this years Social Media Week 2011, highlighted just how interactive and realtime content can greatly enrich your website. The Web is all about engagement. Getting visitors, potential clients and customers to communicate with you online is essential in an ever increasing competitive market. The old addage of 'people sell to people' is still relevant and building rapport and trust is key to a successful business.

A simple communique, such as a short two-minute video to tell people who you are and what you can offer gives a personal touch to your website and develops a bond with your website visitors. I think when recording video for use on your website you do have to be careful of balancing a professional image, with what might look like a quick holiday video. Clear Blue Productions tips on what recorders to buy, lighting and editing software were really useful, but a corporate video may need more polish.

Letting visitors interact with your website is another good way to create engagement. One great idea was to provide a 'VodPod' on your website. This is a widget developed by Nemysis.co.uk that quite simply enables any website owner to record any visitor's message using a webcam and display it on their website. You could use it for message boards, client feedback and testimonials; only thing to bear in mind like any user generated content would be the moderation and approval processes that may be needed.

Another session headed by Amnesty International also highlighted the need to explore further the 'online to offline' relationship between content. Their focus is to look at the use of technology in a human rights context. The issue even now, is that we can't simply rely on the fact that our audience(s) all have access to the Internet and mobile phones. We have to rethink our methods of reaching people by revisiting and not dismissing more traditional offline methods, such as magazines, journals and radio. Especially where human rights are concerned and those most at risk don't have access to online methods.

A really interesting event, some thought provoking sessions and a great way to meet new contacts.

Making your website attractive - why is it important to build links?

It's a crucial part of organic search engine optimisation to build strong referral links to your website. The more referral website links you have to your website, means the greater your chance of higher search engine rankings. In fact search engines see links as ‘votes’ for your website.

Search engines are generally of the opinion that if lots of visitors find your content interesting enough to link to it, then your website must have something useful to offer. Search engines are always on the lookout for 'interesting' sites to display in their top ranking results. Hence the more links you have, the more likely search engines will give you a higher ranking.

However, don't be fooled into thinking that requesting links from just anybody will make your website more popular. When we talk about link building, we're talking about attracting and getting good, quality links from industry partners that you are happy to be associated with and that will add some gravitas and weight to your own website.

You should aim to get quality referrals from:

• People in the same sector, experts or suppliers
• Charity sites, educational organisations, people you support / sponsor
• Industry bodies and associations
• News sites
• Blogs and forums
• Social media and bookmarking sites

If possible suggest the link to your website to your referrer – search engines weight the actual ‘anchor text’ that forms the text link to your website.

Try and include at least one of your core keywords as the link. For example, “My favourite search engine optimisation partner” - where the text links to the URL of the website. However, links from different websites should be varied to aid natural searching.

Link to your own website pages frequently from your own Blog or Social Networking sites, using your website keywords.

Above all you need to encourage people to want to share content from your site. Your website is nothing without it's content and unless you keep your website up-to-date; write good, clear textual content; and provide interesting gimmicks, such as videos, no one will be attracted to your website.