Website optimisation by the leading search engine optimiser in Europe. Divadani Design talks to Paul Herbert about optimising websites for the search engines.

As search engine optimisers go, you won’t find anyone who has a greater understanding of the search engines and optimisation techniques than Paul Herbert CEO of the Where On Earth Group.

In the past, Divadani Design has tried numerous search engine optimisers with disappointing results. As a leading UK website design company, we have always preferred to stick to our knitting and concentrate on what we do best, which is design.

Search engine optimisation is a specialist skill and until we started working with the search engine optimisation arm of Where On Earth, we had believed that genuine high search engine rankings were out of reach and out of our control. Now we believe that gaining top ten positions on the search engines are possible, no matter how big the task.

BEST SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISERS We put a few questions to Paul to try and dispel some of the myths behind optimising a website and optimisation techniques.

Q. Why are you able to get websites into the top ten of Google when other search engine optimisers we have used were unsuccessful?

A. That’s actually two questions. Most search engine optimisers you techniques that are published on the Internet and will only work on uncompetitive key words and phrases and totally useless where Google has several million pages indexed. Search engine optimisers who really know their business, like us, don’t publish their techniques. Only companies, who have taken the trouble to research the search engines, truly understand how they work.

Q. Can someone optimise a website by choosing the right keywords and meta tags.

A. In theory yes, if they are in a non-competitive market but keywords and meta tags play only a small part in how a major search engine will choose to rank a site. Where Google and the other major search engines have tens or even hundreds of millions of pages indexed, you really need to know what you are doing.

Q. So all these emails we receive advising us how to optimise websites are wrong?

A. Misleading is how I would describe it. Most of it is rubbish and just taken from other garbage published on the Internet. Do you honestly think, where Google has a hundred million pages indexed, you can suddenly rocket a website to the top past all the other websites jockeying for position, with a few keywords and met tags. If it was that simple, you would never see a website at the top of a search engine for longer than ten minutes.

Q. So all the advice you see on forums and other websites are wrong?

A. Not all but every optimisation project has to be approached individually. Successful SEO’s don’t have time to waste posting free advice on forums. I would be very wary of any information posted on a forum. We take at least two days researching a project before we even quote for a job, let alone start to optimise a website. There are no such things as generalities when it comes to optimisation. What will work for one website might be the kiss of death to another.

Q. So there is no text book procedure to optimising a website?

A. None whatsoever. That would be the same as using the same surgical procedures to remove a brain tumour as a verruca. If the optimiser is faced with a simple job, then there are basic elements that can be used to optimise a site. However, if the optimisation project requires an optimiser to push a website past millions of other sites, the optimisers have to look at a combination of hundreds of procedures to decide which could be best utilised and how.

Q. Can someone look at one of your websites and learn the standard procedures?

There are no standard procedures. The basic optimisation techniques are visible for everyone to see, but as every website is unique, another optimiser would not be able to emulate our methods. You have to be able to understand how they work, why they work and what methods to use and when. Plus you have to be able to see the whole optimisation infrastructure and that is not possible. This stops other optimisation companies copying our methods and failing to get the results we achieve.

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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISERS – BEST ADVICE There are relatively few search engine optimisers who really understand optimisation procedures. Most optimisers base their procedures on information that is published on forums and other websites. Most of the time, this is the blind leading the blind as much of this information is either wrong or at best misleading. The problem is that someone comes up with a wild theory and within days, it has become a fact.

The reality is – Every optimisation project has to be approached as a unique task, using unique methods applicable to that job. You cannot generalise and expect to get miracles from a few basic out of date techniques. Search engine optimisation is a skill that requires long term study and understanding. There are no magical formulas and no programmes that can suddenly launch you into the higher echelons of the search engines.