SEO is one of the most important factors in a successful website.

Google is the most known "Search Engines" in Canada as well as around the world. It has even spawned a new word in the English language - when you want to search for something on the internet, people will say "I'm going to google that". A recent April 2021 report showed that Google received 92% market share compared to second place Bing (2%) and third place Yahoo at 1.5%.

A great many people, however, misunderstand how SEO works and think that it's instantaneous. It's not. Once a website is completed, it must then be "indexed" by Google and other search engines. This can take up to 6 months to take effect, although averages appear to be between 2 and 3 months most of the time. Since Google and the other "search engines" are third parties over which no one has control, the only thing anyone can do is wait for Google and others to "do their thing". Although we at Affordable Web Design Ltd and our affiliates go above and beyond when it comes to Search Engine Optimization techniques, unfortunately when dealing with third parties, no one can guarantee high ranking be3cause no one can control how they work. We can only follow all the directives as put out by Google and others. Our clients' success rate is a good indicator that what we do is working!

Google and other Search Engines send out "webbots" to "crawl" the web. These are computer generated algorithms looking for certain elements in all the pages of all the websites in the world. The more of these elements you have, the more chances you will be easily found through internet searches for your main keywords, once your site has been indexed.

Many business owners or staff looking after their company web needs may think that just having a website will automatically set them up to be found through internet searches. However, that's just not the way it works!

Just because someone calls themselves a designer does not mean that they have the knowledge or will take the time to incorporate "all the right stuff" to attract Google and other search engine "bots". Most people don't realize that when opting for cheap online templates to create a website, high ranking in your own &keyword& searches may not be possible. The TV ads stating that just contacting them will result in a great business website in an hour may not exactly be in keeping with the reality of web design and effective SEO!

How does SEO work?

Search Engine Optimization is the main "buzz word" used to explain how to "attract" what is referred to as "bots". An internet bot, also known as a web robot, is a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet. These are used by Google and other search engines in order to show how effectively that website measures up compared to its competition. The result is called "ranking".

The reality of the internet is that there are a lot of people out there always bombarding website owners with promises of being ranked number one on Google. No one can truthfully guarantee high ranking. The ranking process is a constantly changing and complex one and is dependent on many, many factors. There is no magic formula to ranking - Google and the other third party search engines publish a long list of requirements and only the professional designers such as Affordable Web Design Ltd, who take the time to add in as many of those parameters as possible into a website as it is being created, will even stand a chance of being successful.

Beware of promises of "top ranking" which are often coming from offshore businesses who simply send out these same emails to everyone without ever even looking at any individual website content.

How does Affordable Web Design Ltd deal with SEO?

The success rate of the majority of our clients when it comes to search engine ranking makes us very happy! This is how we do it:

• Keeping up with the constant changes in search engine optimization techniques is a huge part of what we do and have been doing for over 25 years.
• This means meticulous care on all pages, not just a few general type of factors that will repeat themselves throughout the website pages.
• We carefully incorporate literally hundreds of parameters as published by the major search engines such as Google and Bing, among others.
• One of the most important factors of Search Engine ranking is to have your most important business keywords incorporated into your content through the website, in a variety of different ways because the search engines don't like repetition! We do this work at the same time as we are creating the website, all included in your initial estimate.
• Since SEO rankings are affected by so many different factors, we are happy to revisit websites at various time in order to do some "tweaking" if necessary, and we only apply a time charge based on the time it takes us to do the work.