SEO & Performance

Your website is live online! You’re thrilled. You’ve shared the URL (eg. www.geckofy.co.uk) with all your contacts and you’re getting great feedback. The next challenge is how to attract new visitors.

If you don’t want the cost of advertising or pay-per-click (PPC), your most cost-effective solution is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that gets your website as high as possible in the search listings.

And that begins right here …

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Climb the rankings

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

You’ll want your website to come up as early as possible in online searches: ideally on the first page. This is what our SEO service is about – helping your website pages to rank higher in search engines, so that more people will visit your website.

In fact, SEO is one of the most important factors to be considered in your website design because good SEO is the most effective way of driving relevant, motivated visitors to your website.

Performance

Website performance is about how fast and smoothly your site works: how quickly the pages load, how responsive the site is, and how easy it is to use.

A site that’s quick, reliable and user-friendly, and that works well on all devices, is far more likely to keep your visitors engaged than one that’s slow-loading and difficult to navigate.

Good performance also happens to be one of the best ways for your site to achieve a higher ranking in the search engines.

How SEO works

Search engines such as Google (which has nearly 90% of the market share), Yahoo and Bing have their own algorithms for ranking web pages i.e. deciding what position a webpage will have within a search-result list.

There are hundreds of ranking factors and their exact workings are unknown, not to mention somewhat fluid. However, the more significant factors are well-known and by optimising your pages to these criteria, they will come up earlier when customers are looking for your products or services.

These, for example, are a few of the better-known SEO ranking factors:

Quality of content: The information on your web pages must be informative, relevant and of the highest quality. It should be well written and easy to understand.

Keywords: The correct use and positioning of keywords within the web pages goes a long way to having the pages easily found.

Mobile friendliness: Over 60% of website traffic comes from mobile devices (Globalstats), so the quality and user-friendliness of your site on mobiles is vital in determining its ranking.

Page speed: Research (Google: The need for speed) shows that more than 50% of mobile users abandon a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Pages which load slower lead to lower rankings. 

Backlinks (links from other websites): Links from other high-quality websites to your website are seen as a ‘vote of confidence’ as they suggest that your page is trustworthy and valuable.

Simply put, SEO is the application of common sense principles and not some dark art or rocket science, as highlighted in one of our Insights: Myth-Busting SEO.

How else we can help you

If it’s a brand new website you need – a standout site in look, feel and functionality – that’s what we do best. It doesn’t matter whether you’re after a simple, single-page site or a complex e-commerce platform; or whether you’re floundering in the planning stages or have a clear idea of what you’re after. We’d love to help.

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Whether we’ve built your website for you or it’s already live, our hosting service gives you the peace of mind of knowing that it’s always up and running smoothly. We can take care of maintenance too if that’s what you need. There are plenty of reasons why you should choose us …

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Are you lost for words? Visuals not your thing? We have decades of experience with writing and design for all forms of marketing communications and across a multitude of products and service offerings. Let’s make some magic!

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Working with the Gecko team was an absolute pleasure. Our website is exactly what I was hoping for, and just four weeks from launching, nearly all the books are in the first 15 results on Google search. I couldn’t be happier!

Case study …

Carolyn, Nutshell Books

SEO & Performance FAQs

SEO helps your web pages to show up in search results. The better the SEO, the higher your site will feature in the rankings. Good SEO ensures you are more likely to be seen, and by the right people, without constantly having to pay for adverts.

Keywords are the words or phrases your target audience is likely to use when searching online for your website or similar offerings. Using the right keywords, in the right places, helps search engines to understand what your page is about and to show it to the right audience.

On-page SEO is all the optimisations you or your web developer can make directly on your site to influence SEO, e.g. headings and title tags.

Off-page SEO refers to things outside your site that boosts your ranking, eg links from other websites and social media shares.

This depends on the quality of your site as well as that of your competitors. It can take a few weeks to several months to see noticeable results, but SEO is an ongoing process and requires continuing attention and effort to stay optimised.

To a degree. You can definitely make a difference by ensuring clear content throughout the site and using good keywords. But for significant improvements, hiring an SEO expert will help you to get better results, and faster.

Yes! SEO is especially helpful for small businesses. It helps them to attract local customers, build trust, and compete with larger companies – all without needing a big budget for advertising.

It helps your business to show up in searches from people nearby. They might search for ‘coffee shops near me’ or ‘plumbers in [your town]’. Local SEO drives website visits, phone calls and even foot traffic from potential customers in your area.

No, SEO is an ongoing process. Search engines update their algorithms regularly, and your competition is always changing. Staying up to date is important to keep your site visible and relevant.

Performance directly impacts how users experience your site. The quicker it loads, the more likely visitors are to stay, explore, and convert into customers.

Google and other search engines factor in page speed when ranking sites. That means if your site is slow, it may get pushed down in search results – making it harder for potential customers to find you.

Performance influences everything: user satisfaction, conversion rates, and SEO. A fast site enhances your brand credibility and boosts your visibility online.

Does your website need care and attention?

We’d love to help

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