Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is SEO?

The purpose of search engine optimization is to get your website to rank high on the major search engines. There are many techniques and strategies that are commonly applied to optimize a website to rank high. If you are just starting out or you have an already established website, optimizing a website can be very difficult and there are many challenges that even large websites encounter. SEO is very different that pay per click management, which is a form of paid advertising. Search engine optimization is typically referred to as organic searh results as these results are FREE, or at least you will not be paying per click.

How is SEO applied to a website?

A search engine ranking expert typically will begin an optimization campaign by researching both a website's content as well as the industry that it belongs to. This base analysis will serve as a roadmap to creating a SEO plan that will yield a high ranking website. After the website analysis is completed, your SEO consultant will prepare a written plan that should be followed closely. To optimize a web page, the HTML code is modified to increase the liklihood of getting better search rankings. Many HTML editing programs, and webmasters include additional code that may confuse the search engine spiders. One goal of the SEO is to review the existing HTML code to verify that the code is clean and can be indexed by the search robots. Once a code analysis has been completed, the HTML code of each optimzed page will be modified to include better codes, and tags that mean MORE to the search engines. There are many different ways to achieve the same task with HTML and the job of the optimizer is to apply the correct codes.

How is a website analyzed?

There are a number of different methods used when analyzing a website with a goal of increasing rankings. A website design, or navigation structure can play an important role in determining your ranking and it is important to analyze this aspect of your site. A search engine expert will typically review individual web pages, website analytics, server stats, and current search engine rankings. A professional optimization specialist will have over 100 items in their set of tools to use when analyzing your website.

Analyze Internal Links
An internal link is a link that is on one of your webpages, and it points to another one of your webpages. The base use of an internal link is to help customers to navigate through your website. The internal links are 100% in the control of the webmaster, and they are very important in helping to define your website and its content.

Analyze External Links
An external link is a link from a third party website that points to any one of your website pages. These links are mostly out of your control, but they are very important in the eyes of the search engines.

Review Meta Tags
The meta tags are the single most important tag on a web page. Each page needs at least three meta tags that go onto each web page and those are the title tag, the meta keywords, and meta description. Each of these must be in an exact format and have the correct content to achieve the best ranking. We have a proprietary method for applying these tags which have benefited our clients over the years. It is very important that a good methodolgy is used when applying these tags, but most important is to not change them often. The goal of SEO is not to trick the search engines, instead it is to provide the best content for your customers and web visitors. So our team, during the analysis and review will spend time looking into the theme of your website and the amount of content that you have to support that website theme. The major search engines want to give their visitors the best and most relevant content possible as a search result.

Who is Google's customer?
Good SEO always come's back to the base analysis of who is Google's customer base? And this analysis is important for your website as well, and an understanding that all businesses should have. Google's customer is the average website users, it is you, and me, and our family members and children. It is not the business owner or webmaster. And with this understanding it is in Google's best interest to weed out anyone who is creating a webpage for the sole purpose of ranking high in the search engines. The ultimate goal of Google is the make certain that all top 10 results have relevant content and that they are on topic with the search query.

• How often do you find spam in the top 10 results with Google?
• How often do you find horrible looking unprofessional websites in the top 10 of Google?
• How often do you want to use another search engine because you don't like the results of Google?

With all of that said, Google's Job #1 is providing quality search results to keep the average web surfer coming back. And ultimately, they don't care about any one website or its content. The goal of a great SEO is to make certain that your website has the right amount of content to help Google qualify you as providing the best content on a particular subject.

How quickly can I see improvement in search ranking?

In general it will take time for you to see any improvements from your search engine efforts. One of the main reason is that there is typically a lag between the work that you do, and when it gets reflected into the index. For a brand new website, it can take longer than for an existing website. If you have an existing website that you want to improve SEO for, try out our webmaster services. However, there are benefits to working with a new website also, because Google rarely forgets or forgives. We have worked with clients who have been penalized by Google for many years.

Typically results can start to be seen after three months of an SEO campaign
The speed with which a website can rise to the top of the rankings, will vary for all websites. The following are some of the factors that affect the ability of a website to rank well:

1. How old is the website? What is its age in years?
2. What is the linking architecture of the website: internally and externally?
3. Is the website already indexed within the search engines?
4. How many web pages currently exist for the website?
5. How competitive are the words/keyphrase?
6. Are there any current penalties applied by the search engines?
7. How much investment is being made to improve the rankings?

What is an SEO Timetable?

Every SEO campaign should have a well detailed timetable that describes how and when changes will be made to a website. The timetable should be somewhat general and give the team an overall understanding of what and when things will be completed, and by who. The goal of SEO is to move up in the search engine rankings, and many webmasters fall into the pitfall of trying to do too much too quickly. The search engines really frown against people who are doing things just to get a better search ranking. Remember back to who is the Google customers? And it is the average Google users, it is definitely not the webmaster, or even the advertiser. The only reason that advertisers choose to use Google, is because the web searchers are there.

So, once the timetable is setup be sure to follow it closely and avoid the common SEO mistake of making the wrong changes too quickly. If you try to do too much too fast you can quickly find your website out of the search results all together. So move forward with a solid plan, and achieve rankings the old fashion way.

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