search engines
optimising your site to be found in web searches
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO, is the process of making a website visible to search engines and is primarily a function of the site's structure, written content and links (both external and internal ).
With around 1.3 Billion (1,300,000,000 ) active websites on-line, and well over a million more being added daily, Search Engines (Google, Bing & Yahoo in particular ) are so important to a site's commercial success that almost half of total website development time is dedicated to the process of optimisation.
▼ FAQ: What is a 'keyword'?Not to be confused with commercial pay-per-click products of the same name, the term 'keyword' in this context refers to any word or phrase in your site that may be entered as a search query by potential customers. As a rule of thumb, the better the match, the more consistently your page will appear in search results.
A word of caution: Although some industry terms and technical descriptions may be second nature to you, a potential customer won't necessarily be as steeped in the terminology, and so is unlikely to search for them.
For example; if you sell beds, don't waste valuable keywords on terms such as 'open coil Bonnell spring', 'Marshall coil' or 'Gel hybrid'. . . when the vast majority of the public will simply search for; 'mattress', 'cheap mattress' or perhaps, in these enlightened days, 'memory foam mattress'.
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Rather than wait for a search engine to stumble upon your website purely by chance, I manually register every page of your site independently with Google, Yahoo and Bing, along with sitemaps in the correct format for each.
answer engines
. . .making your site available for LLM & AI searching
One of the fastest growing function of AI is to answer a user's search questions directly. . . rather than creating a long list of web pages that may (or may not! ) contain the information being sought.
If you haven't done so yet, try selecting 'AI Mode' the next time you carry out a search in Google.
Google launched their own AI (Gemini ) at the end of July 2025. . . and where Google goes, all other search engines inevitably follow. Sure enough, a year later, it is estimated that half of all internet searches are now carried out by questioning a 'Large Language Model' such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Deep Seek etc. . . or via an AI Assistant such as Siri or Alexa.
▼ FAQ: How does AI searching work differently?Search engines have traditionally taken search terms and simply looked for character string matches within the readable text of a website.
AI, however, [appears to] comprehend the written copy of a site. . . and compiles its results based on the 'meaning' of those queries.
This is a gross over-simplification, but essentially means that words and phrases likely to be used by your potential customers MUST be presented in context. For older sites, this can usually be achieved by editing the visible copy, and re-structuring the content to meet AI's requirements.
This process is known as AEO, or Answer Engine Optimisation, and all new ipinx site builds are coded and copywritten with full AI search compatibility 'built in'.
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ongoing support
Technology constantly evolves, and it is a measure of the importance of this process that I include the first 12 months of SEO & Answer Engine Optimisation support free of charge with every website development.
Although it can take a little while for the various Search Engines / Answer Engines to fully index your website, once this is complete, 'fine tuning' of your SEO & AEO can begin.
▼ FAQ: How will ipinx support my SEO / AEO?A suite of reporting tools (Google Analytics ) is incorporated into every page of your site, so that I'm able to constantly monitor your visitor numbers, their behaviour and, very importantly, how each of those visitors was acquired.
This analytical information (to which you also have full access ) shows, for example, the most common search queries resulting in a visit to your site. It will also reveal keywords and phrases that would benefit its search performance, were they to be given greater emphasis.
Using these data, I will regularly edit your website's content to enhance the effectiveness of its SEO & AEO. . . and suggest improvements that can be made to third party referral sources such as your social media posts.
Such inward links, by virtue of their associated content, are enormously beneficial to your search visibility. . . and, by inference, your website's credibility!
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