James Pennington presented at the Search Engine Strategies one-day forum at A4U Expo , the Affiliate Marketing conference and exhibition on the 26th October. James talked to 130 people, about how companies from the West Midlands have implemented basic search engine optimisation at zero cost, to gain new business from all over the world.

The talk focused on 4 case studies:

• DAW Consulting (www.dawconsulting.co.uk )
• Adaptawear (www.adaptawear.co.uk)
• Perilla (www.perilla.co.uk)
• Pizzazz (www.pizzazz-retail.co.uk)

All four companies have done the following to their websites, in their own time, without
spending any money -

Optimised page titles for every page on the website
Each page should have a unique title and be focused on the particular page. The page title is what appears in the top of the web browser not in your actual website. The search engines spiders pay attention to the words used in the page title and use the this title in their search results. To have a look at your page titles in Google is to type "site:www.yourdomainname.co.uk", the blue underlined text is your page titles. There are approximately up to 100 characters to use in the page title and Google will displays 60 characters in its search results. If you don't know what to put as your page title a good structure to follow is:

Company name – service/product – benefit – location

Created good quality content and updated content on a regular basis
Good, well written regular content that includes your key phrases will get picked up by the search engines and included in their search results. This content could be in the from of latest news from your company, articles about the area of work you are in or simple top 10 lists about your specialties.

Created a link strategy
This is where each company has actively looked for relevant websites that could link back to their websites. The search engines see each incoming link to your website as a vote or a recommendation for your website.

By setting out to get 3 or 4 incoming links a month, has boosted the online visibility of each website, increased the ranking the sites get and increased the amount of traffic which has lead to new business. Keep track of your web stats using Google Analytics and you'll be able to see where people are coming from and if any incoming links are driving traffic.

Don't buy or sell any links without consulting Google's code of conduct. If you do this you run the risk of being penalised by Google. Recently a well respected business blog has gone from a Google page Rank of 6 to a rank of 3 because the owner had been selling links and ignoring Google’s guidelines.

The optimisation has resulted in:

1. Improved organic rankings for targeted keywords
The companies have seen the key phrases that they have targeted now bring in the top 10 of search results; in some cases they've got the number 1 spot for their chosen term.

2. New business from all over the UK and abroad
The companies have gained new businesses from all over the UK thanks to their improved ranking. In some cases the new business has come from a far away as the USA and Malta. This business would never have happened if they'd not optimised their website.

3. Increased traffic and ability to react to customers
Improved rankings have seen more and more traffic come to their websites. By using Google Analytics to track the visitors to their sites, they can react to the information and adapt their websites accordingly. For example, if the web stats are showing that 80% of people are leaving the website on the About Us page, there is something wrong with the content that needs changing.

4. Greater presence of their company on the Internet
Each of the companies websites can now be found more easily, whether it's from search engines or through other websites. Thanks to the linking strategies, there is now a greater chance of someone finding one of the company's website.


Mark Bonnett, E-Business Consultant, National B2B Centre – 7th November 2007

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