SEO Stands for Search Engine Optimization and basically refers to the processes that are followed when it comes to optimising (getting the most out of) a website to be ranked by search engines. The most popular search engines on the internet are Google, Yahoo, Bing and Microsoft.
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When a website is designed and developed, it should represent more than just a portfolio of your products and services. After all, what’s the point of having a website that looks awesome, but goes unseen by the people that would like to buy your wares? SEO is the technical part of marketing online as it helps your website get promoted to the correct location – right in front of buying customers. ​ 

There are various techniques used to get more traffic to your website from search engines, which can be broken down into two categories. Off-page SEO, is the work undertaken externally to a website and on-page SEO are the changes made on the actual website. ​

Organic SEO or search engine optimisation is one of the most powerful online marketing strategies available to webmasters and bloggers. It takes a combination of high-quality content, social media presence and other factors to climb to the top of the search engine rankings for your specific keyword phrases. Without the right ingredients, your SEO strategy can actually backfire.

It all starts with the keyword phrases and the theme of your content. Without unique, high-quality content, you will struggle to find your website or blog listed on Google, Bing, Yahoo or any other search engine. According to Optimonster these are the most important SEO ranking factors:

1. A secure and accessible website
2. Page speed
3. Mobile friendliness
4. Domain Age, URL and authority
5. Optimised content
6. Technical SEO
7. User Experience
8. Links
9. Social signals
10. Real business information

 
Below, you will find the top five organic search engine optimisation techniques and a few tips to help you gain a larger web presence. SEO is no longer a world dominated by the website receiving the largest number of backlinks.

Good content
Content matters and it must be high-quality content. Low-quality, poorly written content doesn't rank very well because it doesn't provide the user with a great experience.

The goal of Google and all other search engines is to deliver the best possible search results for their users. High-quality, usable content provides the type of experience internet searcher want.

Most searchers seek information, such as a solution to their problem or a how-to type of article about something specific. When your content delivers this type of experience, you gain higher ranking on the search engines because they consider your content to be high in quality.

Use videos or images
Not all content requires a video or an image, but the use of both or at least one can greatly aid in ranking higher in the search engines. Images provide away to break up your content, give the user something to draw them in and give you the opportunity to increase your on-page SEO.

Whenever you provide a relevant image with your written content, you can change the ALT tag and the image title to match your theme. By using your main keyword phrase or a secondary keyword phrase as the ALT tag and title of your image, you score extra SEO points.

Images also provide a second benefit. Google and other search engines will list the images in the "image" search category. This means, when somebody is searching for an image and they find yours, it could potentially lead them back to your website. However, if you don't provide an image title or ALT tag, you may not get listed.
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Videos are another very powerful way to deliver content. Providing a video with your written content gives the visitor a better experience, as long as the video fits with the content. This is a very powerful way to build better organic SEO. In addition, videos tend to gain higher ranking on Google than some written content does. We can constantly find out more concerning techniques for organic search through correct searching. 

Create a blog
Websites without a blog can still rank high on Google, Yahoo and Bing, but they are missing out on one of the most powerful organic search engine optimisation techniques online today. Blogging provides the ability to target a broader subject area and cover very narrow topics within the broader spectrum.

Every blog post acts as a small traffic engine and provides the opportunity to gain more traffic from the search engines. Think of blogging this way, when you post high quality content to your blog, it's like deploying an army of individuals with a stack of business cards. Each blog post will go to a different corner of the internet and attract a different type of individual to your website.

Not only can the blog posts take over first page ranking on the search engines, but they also help you build a community. If your blog post covers topics somebody is interested in, they will subscribe to your blog. When somebody subscribes to your blog, you gain multiple opportunities to sell your products and services to them.
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Meta tag your website
Your META title, description and tags are really important to your overall SEO. Search engines use the meta data to better understand what your page or post is all about. When a search engine creates your listing, the meta data is used for the title and description showing up for your page or post. With the right title and description, you improve your SEO positioning.

Now that you know five of the most important techniques to help you get organic search traffic, it’s time for your to take action. This is not an overnight job, it takes a strategy, a plan and then dedication to keep it up regularly.

If running your business is taking up all your time and you need someone else to manage your organic search traffic for you, contact the team at Perfect Layout on 01708 578 015. ​

​The success of your website is determined primarily by its content. Good content is what sets your website apart from the masses and delivers the right message into the minds of your customers or audience.

Having clear, relevant and keyword-rich content that delivers the right message with power and conviction is the key to success. The content of your website should always begin with proper market research.

​Taglines and slogans that are customer-centric (focusing on the needs of the customer) are essential to capturing their attention. The content on your website should target your audience, engage them and persuade them to take action.
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Content marketing involves the creation and publishing of content and sharing that content in order to acquire customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blog posts, videos, white papers, infographics, case studies, and so on. Posting relevant, valuable and frequently updated information on your website will help boost your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It will also help by placing you in the position of an expert and allow you to build relationships with your audience professionally.
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Another important detail to keep in mind are long-tail keywords. These are keyword phrases that contain at least three words, and sometimes more. Long-tail keywords are used to target niche demographics rather than mass audiences. In other words, they're more specific and often less competitive than generic keyword terms. They are very specific to whatever you are selling. So, said more specifically, whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy.

Some businesses choose to include keywords relevant to their business in their domain name. This strategy works as long as the name is in line with the brand identity for the website. It is also important not to limit your business by choosing a name that is applicable for your business only in the short term. Let your 5 to 10 year business plan reflect where you want to be long term.

​One way in which to create relevant and powerful SEO keyword-content for your website, is through brainstorming. Try and put yourself in the position of your customers and think about the words they might use to search for the services and/or products you are offering. This process can be undertaken on your own or in a group.
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​Because algorithms are constantly changing, it’s paramount that you keep a fresh eye on the content of your site. If people are changing the way in which they search for you – the keywords on your website will need to reflect this too.

​Why not have a look at your site today and think through some of the keywords your customers might be using. Do they appear on the pages of your site?
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Blogging has definitely become a more popular way of engaging with customers since it first appeared in the late 1990’s. The purpose behind blogging has also changed. When it first appeared, its purpose was mostly to relay a person’s thoughts or opinions about whatever took their fancy. These days, the concept adds value to the business world and, as a result, many online businesses have taken to writing blogs about their industry, service or product in order to take advantage of the benefits.​

​These methods go towards optimising a page – basically packing in what you can (in a natural, free flowing way) to hold the attention and inform the visitor, as well as being found by search engines. In order for you to be found in this way you should include an overview of the following:

• Who’s behind the business, the ethos
• What services the business offers
• What products the business offers
 
It should reflect a bite-sized version of what you have on your about page, services page and products page. Try and make the content throughout your site unique and on the homepage, you should aim to write at least 800 words, preferably more.

But what if you have a business that is based on producing visual goods or services – like a cake shop or a photographer? People just want to see the end result right, not read about how it was made?

Whilst many people do skip to the gallery and review the end result before committing to buy, many users these days want to make an educated decision prior to that happening and who can blame them. Today, more than ever, people have a greater choice about which service provider to use.

With so much choice, this means that businesses have got to be more transparent about what they do and how they do it in order to look unique amongst the competition. It would be hard to appear exclusive in a couple of paragraphs (unless you’ve got some serious marketing money behind you) compared to doing so in 800 or so words. Read more about the importance of writing great content from one of our previous blogs.

If the thought of writing creative, relevant and interesting content overwhelms you, why not let us help? 
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​If you have a collection of your own photos we may be able to use those, alternatively, Perfect Layout Digital Marketing can source high-quality stock images for you.

So once the foundation is in place and all content and images have been approved – the turnaround time for showing you the first draft of your website can be as short as two weeks.
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Call or email Perfect Layout Digital Marketing to find out how we can help you: 
01708 578 015 or hello@perfectlayout.co.uk
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As the saying goes, ‘you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure’…In our business, quite often we are told by clients that their friend or a family member was building/has built their website but:
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…they have spent months (even years) working on it and it’s still not finished
...it doesn’t look the way they thought it was going to
...it's not working the way that they want it to
 
Usually, when they are a friend or family member (and not a web designer), they invariably take an off-the-shelf package thinking 'how hard can it be?’. It’s true that building a website from one of these off-the shelf-packages isn't necessarily hard, but do they really know what they are doing? Do they really understand how to make a website perform well and not just look good?
 
There are thousands of cook books out there and it's easy to follow a recipe, but that doesn't mean the results will always be the same, or that what you make will even taste nice. There is a knack to good cooking and the same principle applies when building a website.
 
Often it's the things that look simple that can be complex underneath.

​Building a website in itself isn't rocket science, but there is a method to making a website great. A website with all the right elements in place will add value to your business. A nice looking website, may simply be aesthetically pleasing but does nothing for the growth of your business. The fundamental components you need include:
 
Superb content
By that it needs to be clear, well-written, grammatically correct and keyword rich. Content IS King. Being found in search results is determined by the search engines algorithms matching the users’ keywords with the content on the site. If your content is sparse, poorly written, not properly thought through (using a range of keywords) it is likely that you will feature low down in the rankings.
 
Search Engine Optimised headings
Headings carry more weight than body text, so ensure that your headings are relevant to what your audience is searching for. Using keyword-rich content in header tags will improve the search engine visibility for your target keyword. Mashable also recommends not having the same article title as you would for your page title, and advises how to write a good meta description.
 
Easy to use navigation
If your user experience is cumbersome and clunky, it's likely to put customers off. Make sure that you think carefully about how your users might navigate through your web site. Keep it clean and simple. Before you ‘go live’, test your website out as if you were visiting it for the first time. Can customers navigate your website easily? Is it clear and easy to understand? Could any steps be simplified?
 
High quality images, but not high resolution
There are so many stock photo agencies these days, that having low quality images is not an excuse any more. Your photos need to be clear and crisp, but they must also be saved as smaller files. Large image files will make loading your page slow, which may put people off staying on your website.
 
Calls to Action
A Call to Action (CTA) on a website is a prompt to get the user to take some specified action. It could be a button asking you to ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Subscribe’. Visually it can be a button or hyperlink. When designing your website consider how your customer might want to get in touch with your business. Are you making it easy for them to do so? Are you giving them choice; email, online forms, telephone numbers? Find out more about why Calls to Actions are important.
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​When Perfect Layout Digital Marketing works with customers, these are the core principles which we adhere to as the starting point for building their website. These fundamental steps are the foundations to having the building blocks for great online presence. Though don’t be mistaken with thinking that the work starts and ends with a website alone. Consider the website edging of the puzzle - there are still other pieces to put together before the picture is complete. Perfect Layout Digital Marketing can talk you through what other digital strategies would work best for your business.
 
Perfect Layout can of course create a website that looks great and functions well - but we prefer not to do that. Because we want your business to beat your competitors and bring in a consistent stream of genuine customers, we encourage our customers to take up a support package. Month-by-month we will monitor your website against the competition, check where it is ranking in organic search and, if needed, suggest tweaks.
 
We also apply other digital strategies to ensure that your visibility online is not just limited to your website. Are you active on the right social media channels? Is your business listed correctly in external directories?
 
If you are unsure of what your next step should be, give us a call and let’s have a chat today.

​It was earlier this year, when we were away for my son's rugby tour, when the stars seemed to align and offer me another opening for a client for newly formed Perfect Layout. As you do (when staying in a holiday camp as part of a rugby tour) I headed to the club house to socialise with other parents from the team and partake in a little beverage - mine was a white wine!

As I arrived at the table, I heard one of the dads moan about his website and how it was doing 'nothing' for his business. In the seven years that he had been with this reputable household-name web design company, he said that the only calls he was getting were cold calls. All of his work came from word of mouth. He was thinking of ending the contract, as he was paying a considerable amount of money each month with no real results and couldn’t see the point in continuing.

I decided to join in the conversation and let him know about Perfect Layout Digital Marketing and the work that we do. I didn't lay it on thick; that's not how we work. But I asked him what the domain was and that when I had a moment I would take a look, do a quick website analysis and let him know my observations. Over that weekend, when I found a connection to Wi-Fi (not so great in the middle of the country) and had a look. I was shocked!

This reputable company was taking a fair amount of money each month, for nothing. Their web account manager appeared to be always on the upsell telling him if he did x, y and z, their organic search would improve. What a joke!!!
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The only credit I can give - and don't get too excited - is that their website was on a mobile friendly platform, but the content was next to nothing! Across the entire site was a total of approximately 500 words. How would his company ever be recognised for the services he offered when there was no content talking about what he did on his website? How were search engines expected to return his company in organic search when there was so little to go on?
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Through a few sketchy headings, you got a sense of what they did, but it didn't even come close to what the recommendations are today regarding the amount of content there should be on a website. It also failed to explain the services they provided and there was no geographic explanation of which areas they served. No wonder he was miffed in spending money each month on this.

To cut a long story short, we recently launched his new website (Oct 2017). We created a comprehensive home page giving a full overview of the company and developed unique pages for each of the services offered. Each page is rich in keywords, making it easier for the algorithms to decipher the business that this company is in. We are confident that in the next few weeks, we are going to see his site climbing up in organic search and that in the near future he is going to be receiving calls and winning new business.
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​What's your website status?
If you’re a business that’s just starting out, jotting down ideas, creating a strategy, it’s never too early to start thinking about the type of website design you might have. Perfect Layout is a company that gets excited about helping new and established clients obtain a website that’s designed just right for their business. Every project is met with enthusiasm and we are happy to offer our advice about how your ideas can be translated and understood by your customers when in website format.
Identifying your target audience is key to ensuring that your future plan takes into account the ebbs and flow of the ever-moving online traffic. Your website design should include photographs that are personal and reflective of the service you provide. Content should be interesting and applicable to your product and written in a language that draws people in.

During your free consultation, Perfect Layout can help you focus and offer ideas that you may not have thought about. As an online business, it’s paramount that you get this right or otherwise you’ll end up stuck, going nowhere fast.

Be inspired - have a well thought out strategy
Travelling home on the motorway recently (from a wonderful week in Cornwall!) the strangeness of people’s behaviour whilst driving really struck a chord. All lanes had traffic, but it didn’t stop many drivers constantly swapping lanes. The effect? The traffic slowed down even more rather than speeding up. And there I was thinking that us British were always patient whilst queueing!

If you’re a business that is constantly changing its strategy, trying to get ahead of your competitors but getting nowhere fast, it may be time for you to take a new approach. If you’re a new start up business or your website hasn’t been looked at for a while or you’re a business working without a website – now is the time to make that change and get in the right lane to making your business work.

We’re not like some motorway drivers that can’t help but change lanes when they come up to a bit of traffic.  We think long term and avoid reactionary behaviour. A constant 55 mph is way better than bombing it at 70mph for a quarter of the journey then travelling at 30mph for the remainder.

Having a good website seems easy to do these days. There are many website builders on the market offering web packages at reasonable prices, but there’s a lot you need to know when it comes to ensuring that your website design has everything in place to make it work for you - especially if you want to generate more leads.
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​​1  Content is King. Make sure that you explain what your business is about, ensuring that you use keywords that customers will use when searching for you. Google can then marry up your website with their search terms. If you don’t have the copywriting skills yourself, we can help you get keyword-rich content onto your web pages.

2  Use Call to Actions. If you want your customers to strike while the iron is hot make sure that you have Call to Actions on your page. This could be your phone number, contact forms or special offers to make them act at that moment.

3  Make sure your website is user-friendly. Make it easy for people to find their way around your site. Bad navigation could lose you a lot of business.

4  Use external directories to help boost your online presence. Is the platform that you are building on mobile friendly?

5  If your website isn’t responsive Google will penalise you and your website could suffer in organic rankings.

These are 5 essential tips to keep in mind when you are looking to build your website. If you feel out-of-your-depth and would like some help, Perfect Layout Digital Marketing can offer you a free consultation and put together a digital strategy to get your business to where you want it to be. We can either look at hosting you on one of our monthly packages, or you can arrange ad-hoc work, such as re-writing your current website copy, based on our hourly fee.

If your website has already been built, but you feel like you are not getting enough new leads, it could be because you are missing out on other digital strategies that help boost your online presence; this is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). If you don’t know how to do this, Perfect Layout can help you with elements such as keyword-rich content, setting up and activating Google My Business and Bing Places accounts, as well as listing you on other directories.

Perfect Layout Digital Marketing is a web design company in Romford, Essex. While most of our customers are local to us we do have clients in London and across Essex. Whether you need ad-hoc work to help improve your website design and online presence or you would like ongoing website support, we can help you.

Give the Perfect Layout web development team in Romford, Essex a call today on 
​01708 578 015.

​Mobile Friendly Design
In April 2015, Google announced that it would favour websites that are “mobile-friendly”. Companies that are not investing in new websites, could see a decline in their business leads as their websites fall down the rankings.

​A responsive web design ensures that no matter what device someone uses (i.e. tablet, laptop, mobile phone) your website is displayed on the screen in the most effective way. No longer should mobile phone visitors see a website that is used for standard desktops, like a laptop, which can make viewing content, navigating menus and clicking on links difficult and awkward to use.
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Your site will be built to be suitable on all devices.

Fabulous Design
Visitors will be more inclined to navigate your entire website if it looks good. It should appear clean, logical and informative, with the correct amount of visual content balanced alongside the written word.
The impact on a customer’s emotional response to your website should not be underestimated. Visual design has a huge part to play in how customers consciously and subconsciously perceive your company. If your website design has a below average visual appearance, the customer will believe that this is a reflection of your services/product. Nobody wants to give a sub-standard performance, so set yourself apart from the competition and invest in a website that is better than the rest.
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We will work hard to ensure that all aspects, of your website are attractive to the visitor, encouraging them to stay on your site and find out more about you.
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Robust Platforms
The platform upon which your website’s design is built will have a huge impact on its usability as well as how efficiently you are able to update content and interact with visitors. We can’t overstate how important this structure is to the performance of your website. This is particularly important for e-commerce websites (sites that sell goods).
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To build your website on a platform that:

• Is easily editable
• Has quick load times
• Is SEO-ready
• Is used by a large community of users, website designers developers (i.e. such as a WordPress or Weebly)
• Is actively supported by the developers and updated regularly​

The Perfect Introduction
Having the perfect introduction to your site is really important. When meeting someone face-to-face for the first time, people form an impression within the first 60 seconds. It is no different for visitors browsing a new website and studies show that they spend less than a minute on most of the websites that they visit.
This means that you only have a few precious moments to convey who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and why they should keep reading your site. So make sure you nail your pitch on your homepage, but also bear in mind the importance of content on your other pages as customers do not always start looking for what they want on your home page.
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We will spend time with you perfecting your core marketing message and ensure that your logo design, tagline (catchphrase or slogan) and the initial paragraph of your website copy is clear. We will show that your business has credibility as well as describing what you offer upfront. There’s a lot to communicate in just one paragraph.

Clear Call to Actions (CTA)
A clear call to action is an instruction (to the audience) that should provoke an immediate response. Such as, ‘call now’, ‘find out more’, or ‘buy now’. The best website designs will include value-led CTAs that will subtly encourage visitors to take the next step and engage with the customer, guiding them to making a purchase. Visitors to your website need specific information before committing to make a purchase or inquiry. By using CTAs effectively, they can pre-empt the customer’s next step and gently lead them through your website in the way that you want them to experience your website, all the while delivering the information they are seeking.
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All of our websites will have your phone number at the top of every page of your site and your contact information on the footer of every page along with quick links to your most valuable content. This is even more important for mobile websites where prospects are often just looking for a quick phone number, hours of business or address.

Track Your Conversions
Conversion tracking is a free tool that shows you what happens after a customer clicks on your ad. It is a powerful insight into your customers’ habits and can often be overlooked as a useful tool by some web designers. Yet for every business, it is vital to know how many inquiries and sales are received through your website. For example, have those website customers purchased a product, signed up for your newsletter, called your business or downloaded your app? Conversion tracking allows you to accurately measure your marketing spend, evaluate the success of any improvements or modifications in your website design or online marketing, and ultimately measure the underlying success of your website and business.
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We will help you with tracking your conversions and understand how your website is working for you.

Engaging ‘About Us’ Page
Your company exists for your customers. So by logical extension, your About Us page (even though it is about you) is also about your customers. 
They want to be informed about the engaging profiles of the personalities behind your organisation because it gives them insight into who they will be working with. 
They also want to know how you and your company are going to provide them with solutions. Your About Us page, like the rest of your website, should present all information in the context of how it will benefit your customers.
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We will plan the best way to present your About Us page specific to your business – for your customer.