When we started Google search engine optimisation (SEO) with Care to Listen they were not untypical of many organisations who struggle to gain top rankings for localised searches in Google. They had realised that having a website alone wasn't enough to drive traffic to their site and were keen to put together a strategy that would at least rank them within the first search page of Google. Ultimately ranking highly in google is just part of the story. As marketeers and website developers we strongly advise our customers that websites should have fresh and interesting content to ensure customers stay interested (this is why we recommend content management systems CMS such as Joomla). In the case of Care to Listen, they had a well developed fresh looking site albeit a static brochure site rather than CMS.

Research into Google search behaviour has shown that the top 10 results typically take approximately 50% of all search engine traffic (40% to page 2, 10% page 3 ...). So a site that ranks within the first 2 pages (the higher the better) will have the luxury of attracting the highest volume of search traffic. With a top 10 result as our aim, we set about putting together a link campaign for Care to Listen. During this time we did keyword analysis and a thorough check of other sites specializing in a similar field. Article submission also formed part of this campaign as a way of deep linking business relevant search terms to the main website.

Within one month our SEO campaign delivered on our goal, and we managed to get Care to Listen listed within the top 10 (top 5 even for some search terms). Their main keyword which was our objective to focus on, gained a 19 place uplift from page 3 and a rank of 24 to page 1 and a rank of 8! Not bad for just one month's efforts.

Longer term as with all optimisation, ranking in Google is all about quality content, good research, quality ethical link building and well structured search engine friendly website design. In this first phase we tackled link building, and for this particular customer this was enough to give them the much needed boost they were after. However as a word of warning, results on Google aren't always this instant; it can and often does take a lot of work over an extended period of time to see high search results like these (be very wary of anyone who promises number one spots on Google, the chances are they use unethical techniques which we do not abide by)

For more infomation on Alkimi's search engine optimisation services please contact Beril Sener on 01344 875 476.