Here’s a very simple way of taking your company up the rankings on the search engines.

Take a product or service you sell, think how customers and potential customers might talk about and the questions they might ask, and then write an article along those lines.

That’s it – it is dead simple – except for the fact that you have to do it a lot. It is ok to start with the enthusiasm today, but doing it several times a week is harder.  Doing it every day is harder still – but it is possible.

The way forward of course is to talk this through with colleagues and come up with ever new ideas.  If you pick up what is happening on the phone each day, you will find topics to write about.

One thing to remember is that a lot of people will talk about “key words” but in fact the “key words” will emerge as you think about your product.  The great problem with focussing on key words if you are not a highly skilled writer, writing copy every day, is that focussing on key words will make the work very lumpy and forced.  As a result people turn away from your copy, rather than read on or return.

The only exception to the key words issue is the site name and title – you need to make this highly relevant.

To give an example from our experimental site about Arsenal football club.  We originally called this “Untold Arsenal” which was a catchy name that attracted readers.  Later we changed it to “Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News” and that instantly took us further up the rankings because people search for “Arsenal News”.

There are many other things you can do – but without a lot of copy and some attention to key words, nothing else will happen.

Hamilton House has added search engine optimisation to its Velocity programme – which means you can have a free review and re-writing by the Hamilton House team if you are in Velocity.   There are more details on www.velocity.ac

Tony Attwood