thanks so much ruth appreciate it.
can I ask you as looking at getting website sorted to do you help with seo as I am ok with computers but search engine stuff so over my head its unreal lol
SEO is really not so bad as a lot of people make out; in fact there are a lot of unscrupulous SEO companies out there (particularly the ones who "cold call" you pretending they work for Google when in fact they don't) who take advantage of the fact that a lot of people don't think they understand SEO, and blind them with a load of bull about keyword searches and such like usually...
Whereas... I would say that the key to good SEO is really in the way you word the text on your website... and the most important thing here is that if you don't say it, then the search engines won't pick it up...
So, things which I have found can help with SEO are:
(1) Make sure you mention where you are located. This is critical! There's no point in having the best salon website in the world if it doesn't say where in the country you are! I would actually go as far as recommending that you put your contact details on every page - it's always a good idea to put your phone number somewhere close to the top of each page - as that will probably be the way that most potential clients will still prefer to contact you initially... then I also recommend putting your postal address details, phone number and email address in a "footer" at the bottom of every page too. As well as this being good for search engines, it also makes it easier for *people* to contact you. And the easier you make it for people to get in touch, the more likely they will be to end up becoming customers.
(2) Following on from (1), you can also get your website to appear in searches that people might do for surrounding towns in your area too, e.g. suppose you are based in Shrewsbury, but say in the text on your home page, "We are based in Shrewsbury, but also welcome clients from the wider Shropshire area and beyond, including Telford, Whitchurch, Market Drayton, Oswestry..." - then the chances are that someone searching for a salon in Telford would find your website too... and then might pay you a visit the next time they visit Shrewsbury for a day out, for example... or they might tell their friends who live in Shrewsbury about you, etc...
(3) Be descriptive when mentioning your treatments - as well as mentioning the name of the treatment on your treatment menu, it also helps to mention the brand names of any products you use (e.g. instead of just "Facial", you could have "Eve Taylor Facial", "Dermalogica Facial", "Environ Facial", etc, depending on which brand of products you use) - so then your website should come up for someone doing a search on that particular brand of products too.
(4) Be aware of "meta tags". There is some speculation in SEO circles as to how important meta tags actually are - but I think it does help if you use them all the same.
The "meta tags" you'll be most interested in are:
(a) Description - this is where you would enter a brief text description about your website - e.g. "Ruth's Salon in Shrewsbury, Shropshire offers a range of treatments including Dermalogica facials and Nouvatan spray tanning".
(b) Keywords - this is where you would enter a list of "keywords" for your website - here I normally use the names of any treatments you do and products you use, as well as general words such as "salon", "beauty", etc and also the name of the town and county where you are based.
(c) Robots - this is where you specify how search engines should index your site - for most cases, this should be set to "index, follow" - meaning that search engines should index that page and follow any links in that page.
It's a BIG help if you use suitably descriptive text for the "title" of your website too - which appears in the <title> tag... again you really should mention the town and county you are located in here - normally I would use a more condensed version of the text in the "Description" meta tag, e.g. "Ruth's Salon - Dermalogica facials and Nouvatan tanning - Shrewsbury, Shropshire". Some people just have the title set to "Home" or something like that - which is pretty useless in terms of SEO (the title is one of the most important things you can set in terms of SEO so it makes sense to make best use of it).
I could go on further... but this will probably stand you (and others) in good stead in terms of SEO... however please remember that this is *my* take on SEO - other people may have other ideas and opinions - but I have found that (in general) it works very well for sites that I have designed in the past...
