SEO web design is web design developed and designed from the ground up with the future visibility of the site at the forefront of all design decisions, functionality and website development.

A great website takes more than just great design.

As Glasgow’s leading business website design agency we’re more than just a design company. We’re passionate and obsessive about every project we develop. Delivering websites that win across all levels of design, development, performance and promotion. If a websites not developed with the future visibility of the site in mind, digital marketing efforts will be nowhere near as effective, if at all – as they could be.

It’s a competitive place the world of the web and gaining search engine success requires a website to be user friendly and send the right signals to the search engines to help them understand what the website is about and what the site is trying to rank for.

Avoid your business website development being a multi-venture process, and begin your project with an SEO web design company that can deliver what’s needed from the start!

When a business is looking to reach new customers, gain rankings within the search engines and attract website visitors that purchase products, services, make contact and enquires. Two of the most valuable long term strategies are organic SEO and also local SEO.

Organic SEO is the process of improving a website rankings within the “natural” unpaid listings within the search results. As oppose to using a paid strategy also known as Pay Per Click (PPC) or search engine marketing (SEM). When a company chooses to use paid advertising within the search engines, these paid adverts (listings) ar displayed at the top and to the right of the search results – only visible until the set budget for the listing or allocated time has been accumulated.

Natural listings are “organically” earned by using digital marketing and SEO techniques to drive traffic to a website and through time increase the website rankings within the search engines. When a website has “earned” its listings within the search engines, these are displayed within the main, center area of the search results and do not have an expiring period or disappear after a set amount of time.

Local SEO involves similar processes to organic SEO, by earning the websites positions within the search engines in a natural and organic manor. Local SEO is targeted towards local customers searching for local businesses, products and services in a specific local area.

So you have a new website, your keen as mustard to get ranked on page one of Google as soon as possible, you want to be there now!

We understand the attraction and the eagerness so many businesses have to gain page one presence within the search engines. Sadly it’s not quite as easy clicking a few buttons and off your website goes, right onto page one – if only it was!

There is however, one way you can gain page one presence in a heartbeat.

You can opt to use Pay Per Click, the drawback with this option is each time a visitor clicks on your listing, your charged. Using this strategy with a brand new website that’s had no on-page SEO conducted is not recommended.

Getting back to how long it will take to naturally earn your website onto page one for your desired keywords (search terms).

Google takes into consideration over 200 factors when it comes to ranking a website. A brand new website and domain has a lot of ground to cover and signals to send before it’s even indexed never mind ranked.

Rankings are achieved by search engines bots being able to crawl a website and understand what the site is about and what it’s trying to rank for, along with digital marketing and promotion of a website to attract visitors and send signals to the search engines. If a website has aimless content that’s not targeted to any keywords, no on page SEO has been conducted and the bots can’t get access the site to crawl in the first place – you’re not going rank anytime soon!

That said, even when vital on-page SEO has been conducted, it takes times for the site to be crawled, the domain and the site as whole to gain trust and rankings to increase. Deciding factors on how long it takes to rank a website for desired search terms, mainly depend on how competitive the search terms are your trying to rank for and how valuable, unique and well targeted your websites content is. The websites design and usability also plays a big part in whether it will rank well or not.

Choosing an SEO web design company can be a worthwhile process and having your website developed with the search engine goals in mind – from the beginning.

There is no quick fix or short solution for gaining organic, natural rankings for a website, realistically you’re looking at anywhere between 3 – 6 months before you start to gain a quality web presence within the search results and begin ranking for the majority of your keywords. To maintain your web presence and rankings, SEO and digital marketing also needs to be maintained. Freshness counts for a lot, and just as your site climbed up the ranks for keywords you were targeting there’s a million more behind you hunting for the same positions!

Depending on how competitive the keywords are your trying to rank for and the level of your budget for time spent on professional SEO – will depend on how fast you can rank.

It did used to be possible to rank a website in a few days, back in the days when spam ruled search and anyone could load up a website with a tonne of their desired keywords and within a few days there they were hosting tops spots through cheating their way up the listings. Needless to say the search results a few years back were full of junk, ads and spam. Google introduced many ranking factors that a website must meet to be listed for their desired keywords – also known as Algorithms.

Hence why nowadays, you can’t just wish for some of that Google dust and be boasting top spots in the search engines within a day or two! I really wish there was a short answer for this, but just as there is no short solution, there’s no short answer!

If you’re looking for a professional, results driven SEO and digital marketing plan to gain your website a natural, organic and results driven web presence, get in touch with Glasgow’s leading digital marketing and SEO agency to start your websites success.

Needing SEO or not needing SEO is like saying do you need tyres on a car?

Yes, you could still drive the car without any tyres but you’re not going to get very far!

SEO is one part of the online equation a website needs to be successful and set for search engine success. It’s by no means the be all and end all, however is a fundamental necessity for any foundations to future search engine success. There’s many other processes that’s needed in addition to on page SEO and other SEO techniques, combined with digital marketing and website promotion in order for a website to be search engine compliant and stand any chance of success within the search results or indeed receive visitors that convert into sales and contact.

SEO and digital marketing are very much like ying and yang, both do exist on a singular level and can be separates brought together at a later stage, compatible, complete when joined and coincide with each other seamlessly.

SEO is the first and foremost priority for any website seeking to gain search engine visibility, rank for desired search terms (keywords) and ultimately fare well within the search results. It’s important to point out that SEO consists of many processes, quite often spoken of as a complete process –  of which its not. SEO is the process of preparing a website to be search engine compliant and signal to the search engines what the website is about and what search terms the website would like to be included in the search results for.

Processes like keyword written and targeted website content, keyword targeted page titles and URL’s, correct page formatting using heading tags also known as H1, H2, H3, H4 tags and so on. On page (in text links) also known as anchor text are just some of the basic on page, content related SEO processes that need to be implemented in order to help the search engine bots understand what the web page is about. In addition to these on page aspects, other areas need attention and more to the point creation. A website also needs what’s known as robots.txt. This is text file created for the search engine robots guiding them to the websites sitemap which helps them crawl the websites pages and find their way through the site.

There’s also a websites images and overall site speed that need to be fine-tuned and optimized along with correct server configuration and overall user friendliness and site use ability that must be in line with Google Webmaster Guidelines. These are just some of the SEO fundamental basics that’s essential to any websites success within the search results.

As easy as they may sound, conducting these processes correctly and naturally is a lot easier said than done – believe me! We’ve all had to start somewhere – and way back when on my 1^st attempts at this I spent more hours pondering why my efforts where in vain than I did sleeping!

Now let’s move onto digital marketing, this is the yang to the ying!

You’ve fine-tuned your website, design, content, images, server and page titles. You’re ready to begin the promotion of your website and keen to drive traffic and move up the search results. So how is this done…?

Digital marketing my friend!

Digital marketing is the process of promoting a website online with the aim of attracting visitors, earning back links, improving rankings and conversions. This can be done in a variety of ways and as the old saying goes, variety is indeed the spice of life! This is especially true when it comes to online, digital marketing.

Content as the digital marketing and SEO proverb goes – is king! It always will be the cornerstone to a websites successful marketing strategy.

Now content is not just in text or article format, content is content in any shape or form. This includes info-graphics or cool graphics for that matter! Video and media content, slides or photo content, how-to’s, guides, blog posts, articles – anything in fact the more unique and creative the better especially in this day an age when the world of the web is so noisy and loud you need to be able to grab people’s attention, because it really is a black hole of distraction – everywhere!

Using social media, niche related forums, video channels and micro sites, blogs and mini sites is a great way to extend the reach and online presence of a businesses website and get to the places where your intended customers and audience are.

Digital marketing is indeed a vital necessity just as SEO is, without one the other is still possible, but holds far less weight and chances of success!

So yes, the answer to does a website need SEO and digital marketing – yes if you want it to stand any chance of success among the infinite number of websites out there – all doing what you do and selling what you sell!

Depending on what type of penalty your site has been effected with and the reason for the penalty – will determine on how long it will take for your site to fully recover and regain lost rankings.

Manual Actions Penalty Recovery

To see if your site has been effected by a manual action penalty, you can perform a quick search in Google for your company. If the site doesn’t show up in the search results, even with the company name. It’s likely the site has been removed from the search index. Taking a look in Google Webmaster Tools (Providing this is set up), will tell you if your site has been issued with a manual action penalty.

To recovery from a manual action or an algorithm penalty, first you need to clean and repair the cause of the penalty. This may include removing spammy and unnatural links, re-writing duplicate content to be unique or indeed cleaning up any keyword stuffing or black hat SEO techniques. The quicker this is done, the quicker the manual action is lifted and organic, white-hat SEO and manual link building can commence.

Algorithm Penalty Recovery

Algorithm penalties are slightly different than manual actions.

If your site has been affected by a Google Algorithm, in the first instance you need to identify the cause and the penalty. The thing with Algorithm penalties is your site may still be found in the search results, although what you might see is rankings for certain search terms dropping as well as a significant drop in traffic.

It has been known for some sites to take up to 6 months to a year plus to recover fully from a Google algorithm such as the Panda or Penguin update. Depending on the reason for the penalty and how the rankings were gained in the first place will determine how long it will take for the site to fully recover and gain back their rankings.

Bear in mind if the previous rankings have been gained in an un-natural or black-hat manor, then you’re looking at starting from scratch and building organic, natural rankings through content marketing, social media marketing and digital marketing techniques. When this is the case, you’re realistically looking at a six month period before you start seeing results.

There’s no getting around it, websites nowadays needs to play by the rules and earn links the manual, white-hat and natural way.

Sadly many “cheap SEO” companies operate using black hat SEO with the results often very short lived. The carnage caused when Google catches up, costs ten times more than professional services would have cost in the first place.

Prevention is far better than cure!