Focus: search engine optimisation

Some of your visitors will come to your site as a result of offline marketing - word of mouth, local advertising or flyers. Others will be searching for a site like yours on the internet, using 'keywords' - words that they type into search engines. In order for them to find your site (rather than your competitors), the search engines have to rate your site more highly than your competitors site. They do this in a number of complex ways, but there are a few tips to bear in mind, which include:

• the keywords should be used regularly on your page - but not so frequently that you are 'spamming' the search engines
• you should aim to get lots of good quality backlinks - people linking to your site - as these boost your popularity
• your title tags should contain at most 1-3 keywords, and these should vary by page, using the most appropriate words on each page
• use real words in a link - not 'click here'
• ideally, your keywords should be in your domain and url, although this isn't always possible
• search engines can't read Flash, some DHTML menus and images - so getting accessibility right for people will also help you with the search engines.

We can help you think through some of these issues, and can offer advice to help you get better results.