You could be forgiven for thinking that an established site is ahead of the game when it comes to SEO. After all, an established site has had time to develop a relationship with the search engines, right? Surely the work that needs to be done for a site with search engine history is a lot easier than having to start all over again.

Unfortunately, existing sites often feature some very basic roadblocks when it comes to the search engines. When most businesses approach SEO, it’s because the competition seems to be trumping them in the search engine results pages. They want to ensure that their site works harder to climb the ladder. In most people’s heads, this involves the addition of certain search engine optimisation techniques to what is already on the site. It comes as a surprise to a lot of site owners that the removal of some site elements is necessary for a ranking boost.

There are a lot of non-search engine-friendly sites out there and site owners rarely realise that it’s their own site that’s holding them back. SEO is a complex, technical process that often requires professional consultation to succeed. You can talk to our consultants at SEO Consult about your site’s SEO. When you approach a professional, it is important to be aware that many elements of your site may need alteration.

Before you approach an SEO firm, it’s good to have an idea of what your site needs. Here are some of the most common SEO roadblocks:

1. Technology. Web designers and SEO professionals are two different types of experts. Often the two professions overlap, but in general web designers create websites according to aesthetic and practical principles. This often means the use of non-SEO-friendly technology, such as Flash. The technology used to build your site can have a big impact on the amount of work required for its SEO

2. Structure. A complicated site structure is not search engine-friendly. One of the principles of SEO is to place important pages as close to the main page as possible. This can mean that your site needs to be completely restructured in order for search engine spiders to crawl the places you want them to go

3. Naming conventions. A naming convention is such a simple thing, but it can make a big difference to your SEO. Many businesses develop numbered file naming conventions to keep files in a usable order, but numbers are useless for SEO. Renaming files with keywords is one of the basic steps to improve your site’s crawlability. Your URLs may be reworked to include keywords as well

4. Layout. The layout of information on a web page is often re-worked for SEO, in order to ensure that keywords are set in prominent places. This can upset a site’s design conventions, again because web designers have different aims to SEO professionals

When approaching SEO, it’s important to keep an open mind and listen to your consultants. Your users and your business will benefit from the changes.

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