South African Website Design Company

Websites Web Marketing

There are numerous reasons why your website won't appear on the first page of Google, and so there are just as many techniques to get it there. Some are free, some cheap, some expensive, some once-off, some on-going. So it should come as no surprise, that there are entire companies dedicated purely to website marketing. We are not one of these companies, but do offer certain website marketing services...

What we can do for you:

1. Fundamental SEO

Most companies that offer SEO (Search Engine Optimization), are really only offering you what a good web designer should have done in the beginning. Correct implementation of Title tags, meta data, H1 tags, alt attributes, webcrawler-friendly navigation etc are all simple SEO concepts, but also evidence of good web design.

If we build a website, we do it properly, and that means that this on-page optimization is included at no extra cost.

We don't offer SEO for websites we didn't design ourselves because generally speaking, other web designers code sloppily, and make poor site infrastructure decisions. Apologies if that sounds arrogant, but we are perfectionists, so we would end up spend more time fixing their nonsense than just redesigning your website from scratch.

2. Directory & Search Engine Submissions

Unless you tell Google and other engines/directories that your site exists, the chances of them finding your site naturally, without intervention, is almost non-existent. Of course if they don't know your site exists, they will never add you to the search results pages. We offer a service of manually submitting application forms in the correct manner to Google, and other popular search engines and quality directories for the sole purpose of letting them know your site exists and what it's about.

You might be tempted to think that only Google matters, but the other directories that choose to include your site in their listings provide you with a valuable one-way link. A one-way link from a quality site is considered a vote of confidence in Google's eyes, and where other factors are equal, this pushes you above your competitor in Google's search result pages.

This is a once-off service. Many SEO companies will want to make this a monthly service so that you have to pay every month, but, if done correctly, it only needs to happen once. In fact, repeatedly submitting your site to the same directories over and over will result in your site being banned from some of these.

Another thing worth reiterating is that we complete each submission form manually. For the past 15 years or so there has been software available that allows you to input your website's details, hit 'go' and watch it auto-submit the website to hundreds of directories. These programmes may seem like a nice short cut but they fill in forms sloppily - directories often change their search fields and the software is not kept up to date which results in incorrectly entered data. This, at best, will get your submission ignored, and at worst, banned. Most decent directories have now also implemented various kinds of anti-bot technology to block these programmes, rendering the software useless, so if someone approaches you and says they can submit your site to 'hundreds' or 'thousands' of directories, they are likely using one of these programmes and the success rate is slim to none. We don't submit to 'hundreds' or 'thousands' of directories, but the directories that we choose are worth submitting to, and we take time to ensure that we are applying for your website to be listed under the most appropriate category and that all the info is correctly entered.

During this process, we also produce an xml sitemap for Google and Bing so that your pages are indexed quicker. Additionally, we've started including meta information so that your site will display with an image if posted as a link on Facebook.

What we don't do:

For many companies, fundamental SEO and directory submissions, coupled with a bit of patience is sufficient to achieve success on Google. If, however, your market sector is very competitive, you may need to do more in order to increase your website's visibility. As mentioned at the top of the page, there are entire companies dedicated to search engine research, optimization and marketing. We are not one of these companies - our primary focus is on producing a good quality website with a solid foundation.

Here are two services you would consider a dedicated SEO company for:

1. Research and Content Creation

A good dedicated SEO/marketing company will research your market sector to determine the best keywords and phrases for your website to target. These will be phrases that have a high search rate and low competition - meaning lots of people search for a particular phrase, but not many websites are gearing their content around that phrase.

The company will then embark on rewriting your content (the text) to target said phrase and in some cases, generate new content, sometimes on your own site, and other times on external sites that link through to your site.

They will then monitor the results of their efforts via analytics and make adjustments to their created content according to the data they receive.

2. Google AdWords

Google AdWords is Google's Advertising System. This basically works in the following way - you set an advertising budget, for example R2000/month, and choose search phrases that you think potential customers might use. Then if someone searches using that phrase, your website listing will appear as an advert above all the normal listings. If someone clicks on the advert, Google deducts a certain amount of money from your budget. The exact cost of each click is dependent on how high the competition is for that phrase, or in other words - how many of your competitors have also chosen that phrase.

Technically an AdWords campaign is not part of SEO because it does not entail optimizing your website, but rather optimizing the advert. So this is a service that not all SEO companies offer. It is seen as a last resort because ideally you want your website to feature organically (as a natural legitimate listing) on the first page of Google rather than paying copious amounts to be appear as an advert above the legitimate listings, but sometimes it is necessary.