SEO, Google, Bing or AI website search engine optimisation
search engines
aiming to be first among equals. . .
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 the process of optimisation represents almost half of the total website development time.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO ), is the process of making a website visible to traditional search engines and is primarily a function of the site's structure, 'meta' keywording, links and written content.
▼ Choose your words carefully!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 higher your page will appear in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages ).
Google, Yahoo and Bing take their keywords from the visible text on your site, the headers, and all of the website's hidden (or 'meta' ) content.
avoid jargon!
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.
If you sell beds for example, 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 use; 'mattress', 'cheap mattress' or perhaps, in these enlightened days, 'memory foam mattress'.
keyword dilution
Following on from the previous point, the simple mathematical truth is that the greater the number of different keywords stuffed into any given page of a website, the less import each one will be afforded. This is another advantage of registering each page independently, as if it were a website in its own right. . . each can then carry key phrases that are specific to the subject of that page.
word order
Google is likely to afford a higher average position in SERPs when a search query also matches the word order of a phrase in your site. An example; people living in, say, Milford Haven, are nine times more likely to search for 'gardener Milford Haven' rather than 'Milford Haven gardener'. Think about how you apply such geographical filters when you use a search engine!
meta content
Meta data is information about information. On a desktop or laptop computer, roll your mouse over any link on this page and you will see text appear. This is an anchor 'title tag', just one of the many elements of meta information embedded in the page. . . invisible to users, but readable by search engines.
To make Google even happier, try the same link on another page and you'll see that its title tag is worded differently. Every website I design is hand written and includes hundreds of meta elements that feed hungry search engines, both traditional and AI, to get you noticed.
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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.
▼ Why manually register every page?Submitting pages separately in this way potentially leads to multiple entries in SERPs, and allows keywords to be specifically tailored to the subject of each page (see; 'keyword dilution' in the previous bonus content, above ).
search engines eat words
Not just the obvious, visible, copy that we all see on the screen, but also the hidden 'meta' text that lurks beneath the surface and is used by Google, Bing & Yahoo to decide whether your site, or your competitor's, will appear highest in their results.
SEO is one of my key skills and, being fundamental to the design of your website's infrastructure. . . is incorporated into the DNA of every page!
Google, Yahoo, Bing & AI search engine optimisation (SEO)
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Optimising for answer engines & AEO for LLM (Large Language Model) optimisation.
answer engines
the future of web searching. . .
An Answer Engine, as the name suggests, is an application designed to answer a user's question directly. . . rather than, as with traditional search engines, providing a long list of web pages that may (or may not! ) contain the information you are looking for.
If you haven't done it yet, try selecting 'AI Mode' the next time you carry out a search in Google.
Google launched its AI search mode, Gemini, at the end of July 2025. . . and where Google goes, all other search engines are likely to follow. Sure enough, less than a year later, more than half of all internet searches are now carried out by questioning an LLM (Chat GPT, Claude or Perplexity ). . . or indirectly, via an AI Agent such as Siri or Alexa.
▼ Discover how AI searching worksSearch engines traditionally match the character strings of queries entered by users with words ocurring in the readable (and meta ) content of a website.
AI, however, appears to 'comprehend' the text of a site. . . and compiles its results based on the 'meaning' of that content.
This is a gross over-simplification, but essentially means that words and phrases likely to be used as search queries by your potential customers MUST be presented in context. For older sites, this can usually be achieved by editing and re-structuring the meta content to meet AI's preconceptions.
All new site builds are coded and copywritten with full AI 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.
▼ More about seo / aeo supportA suite of reporting tools (Analytics ) is incorporated into every page of your site, so that I'm able to constantly monitor your visitor numbers, behaviour and, very importantly, how each of those visitors was acquired.
The analytical information collected via Google or Bing (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 the search performance of your website, 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 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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