A happy little story for the new year; one of our oldest clients has managed to get to the fabled number one spot on Google (at the time of writing..!), for a variety of keywords that are very relevant to her business. This holiest of grails has had many a marketing budget thrown at it in vain, and yet our friend Vanessa Webb has managed it, spending only her time, and literally single-handedly! How on Google Earth did she do it?

A lot of people ask us about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation - you know it's for sale when it's an acronym), and we say the same things that very often they can't instantly do much about. Apart from all the crooked business of statistic manipulation, pop-up windows, and putting Britney Spears in your metadata, there often really isn't a quick fix for most sites. Here's some things that Google likes.

  • Sites that have stayed in one place for a long time (in terms of where they are hosted).
  • A front page that immediately contains indexible data (including keywords) relevant to (and repeated throughout) the rest of the site as much as is tactfully possible.
  • Regularly updated, indexible content. The more often the better.

A lot of this is down to the designer - it depends upon the structure of the site itself. Assuming that you have a savvy team on the job though, a huge amount of difference can be made by the ongoing actions of the informed site administrator. In this case, all that Vanessa has done to achieve her prize is observe our three little rules above.

  • We've hosted her site for five years now.
  • We built it to appeal to search engines by providing the means for her to edit the aforementioned indexible content (which we also rather cleverly included... alot of sites don't!)
  • She in turn has regularly updated her content in subtle, barely noticeable ways which keep bring those Googlebots back again and again. Simple as that.

This is a testament to her, not us - all we did was what we always do, and build a site that can be easily indexed by search engines. She made the difference with her constant attention, for which there can be no substitute. We're dead chuffed for her anyway - her unassuming site is here. Try Googling the following and look at her go!