Search Engine Optimization
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3 Tips:
1. Choose your Keywords/phrases wisely
2. Use the appropriate markup in your pages
3. Put your Ad where the Buyers are
The single most cost effective web marketing practice is to optimize your web site for search engines. With a solid search engine strategy, your web site will gain long term traffic unachievable through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Pay-For-Rank (PFR) systems, with a Return on Investment in less time!
Through all of our web site and web application projects, we try to incorporate our Search Engine Optimization Services to help our clients gain access to that coveted 1st page in Google!
What does "optimize your web site for search engines" mean? When a person types a search term into Google or Yahoo for example, the search engine delivers a list of websites, ranked by relevance to the word that was entered. Your goal as a web marketer is to have your site rank as high as possible when potential customers are searching for products or services that your website delivers. The higher placed your site is in the search results, the easier it will be for customers to find your products and services.
How is SEO "most cost effective"? In contrast to spending money on advertising, PR and direct mail, marketing efforts that try to get potential customers interested in you, optimizing your site for better search results just makes it easier for those already interested in your business to find you. You could potentially see a hundred-fold increase in the traffic to your site by following good SEO principles.
SEO matters. A study conducted in 2001 by Jupiter Communications revealed that 42% of respondents indicated that using a search engine was their most common way of finding an online vendor, the vendor’s URL taking second place with 23%. A 2001 study by NPD, comparing search listings to ad banners, found that respondents were 7 times as likely to read a search listing than an ad banner, and 20 times as likely to click on a search listing. These studies were conducted in 2001. Since then search engines have become even more popular, especially Google. So if you want customers to find your site, you need to show up high in the search results.
The use of the Search Engines has grown tremendously since those studies, further enforcing the importance of a good SEO strategy.
You can pay money and buy search terms from the major search engines so that your listing appears prominently on the page when a search is performed using that search term. But why pay money when you can make simple changes to your site so that your site naturally ranks higher?
Our Process
There are several steps to optimize a site for search engines, the most important of which is the selection of keywords and key phrases. After all, the keywords and key phrases are what potential customers are going to type into a search engine to find your product or service.
The following outline gives an overview of the steps we take for an SEO Initiative:
- Obtain the starting page rank for your web site in the major search engines
- Obtain a list of Keywords and Key Phrases from you for your web site
a. We will also evaluate your competition and find keywords that they are using
b. We will narrow the entire list down to the most important Keywords and phrases
- Analyze all of the content on your web site to find places to use the new keywords and phrases we wish to target
a. Replace page titles (as seen at the very top of Internet Explorer, right next to the Internet Explorer icon (very top-left corner), and to the left of the text ‘Microsoft Internet Explorer’) with appropriate keywords and phrases for the specified page
b. Update page copy (with your approval), to include more of the keywords and phrases
c. Use appropriate HTML tags for optimizing the page including:, H1, H2, H3, alt text attributes, title text attributes, etc…
d. Add additional pages of content where possible that feature the new keywords
- Make improvements to existing design-oriented (HTML) techniques that were used prior to this SEO initiative that are currently inhibiting your site from being effectively indexed by search engines
a. Removal non-essential tables
b. Addition of appropriate alt and title text attributes for images an links
c. Removal of non-essential iframes and framesets
d. Replace strait-image links, with image backgrounds, and text overtop
- Establish a list of potential inbound links from other sites, and arrange a one-way or reciprocal link with those sites
a. Find industry-related sites with page ranks higher than, equal to, or less than your site, and attempt to get them to link to your site
b. Find forums and bulletin boards that are related to your site, and post keyword-rich entries about your site, with links to your site
i. We maintain an open dialog on the forum or bulletin board as to not come across as a pure solicitation
ii. Forums and bulletin boards tend to be frequently indexed by search engines
c. Find free-ad sites to post text-based ads about your web site, using keyword-rich descriptions, and linking back to your site
- If possible, add your products or services to Froogle.com, Google’s free product search facility
- Give the major search engines time to index your web site and find the strategically placed links to your site, which can take up to 60 days
- Eight week review of your web site’s page rank, to evaluate the effectiveness of the keywords and phrases used
a. Reports will be sent via email, of the status of your site’s page rank for the keywords and phrases selected
b. A Google Analytics account will be created for you to monitor the traffic fluctuations to your site and inform you of which sites are referring the most traffic
- After eight weeks, we will reevaluate with you, to see if there are any keyword or key phrases that you would like to adjust or change.
- If you would like further optimization or changes done, we will work with you to adjust keywords and phrases, and further optimize your site
What We Need From You
- FTP Access to you site: In order for us to make the necessary changes to your web site, we will need FTP access to modify the files used by your site. If you are currently using a web-based system to update portions of your site, we will need a login account to access those features as well.
The FTP login and connection information is something that can be attained from a previous web developer, or directly through the company that hosts your web site. We are happy to contact either the previous developer, or hosting company to help get the needed information.
- Desired Keywords and Key Phrases: Although we will evaluate your web site and your competitors’ websites to find relevant keywords and key phrases, we ask that you send us a list of at least 10 keywords or phrases that we can target in our optimization efforts.
As a general rule, single keywords such as ‘football’ or ‘horse’, are not nearly as effective as key phrases such as ‘official NFL football’, or ‘brown Belgian Draft Horse’. For this reason, we recommend that you focus your list on key phrases, rather than keywords.
We ask that you send us your keywords and phrases via email as soon as possible, as this is one of the earliest requirements to beginning the SEO process.
Timeline
Once we have received FTP access to your site, and the list of keywords and key phrases, we will go to work at getting your site optimized. This process ranges in time, depending on the industry, and size of the site. The average time it takes us to make all of the necessary site changes and do the link-building portion is 2 weeks. For very small web sites that were originally developed by a professional, using common web techniques, we can often complete the SEO process in one week.