What IS “SEO”?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a key component to a successful web site and earning a return on your web site investment. More importantly, SEO is also the process of attempting to attain page 1 placement for a website on all the popular search engines.
Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? It’s a lot more complicated than it sounds & successful SEO is an art.
There are many in’s & out’s to proper SEO and the rules can change quickly! Have you heard of the Google “Panda” update? It left a LOT of people dead in the internet waters & their online business’ dried up virtually overnight!
Search Engine Basics
Most websites will score on page 1 for a search of the site name just by virtue of exisiting. This is because all the major search engines routinely send out “spiders”, or “bots”, which are mechanisms for crawling the world wide web to find new content; content like updates to current websites and NEW websites, like yours. If you have a website, sooner or later you’ll be found and “indexed” (added to their list of sites) unless you’ve specifically requested that your site not be indexed.
Why Hire SEO Services?
Would you like more qualified customers? Successful SEO will put your service or product right in front of the prospects looking for your specialty and prospects see you BEFORE they see your competitors!
To rate page 1 for a search term other than your dotcom name, though, takes some knowledge & work and you must take ANY service provider’s guarantees of “page 1 placement” with a large grain of salt.
Consider your prospects & market ~ What will they search for on Google, Yahoo or Bing? Specifically, what keywords or phrases might they use? There are ways of finding out what prospects are searching for, too.
Decide on key words & phrases ~ Your prospect’s search terms should be the keywords & phrases to incorporate into the content of your site. Those “bots” & “spiders” I mentioned earlier try to match sites to the keywords/phrases used by your potential customers, the most relevant web sites being served on page 1.
Benchmark your website ~ See where you stand right now! Type a reasonable search term into Google, etc. & see where your website shows up. If it’s not page 1, your chances of getting visitors drop dramatically.
Use PROPER Optimization Techniques ~ Write proper ad copy (written for the internet), validate your site code, make sure your linking structure is proper…
DON’T try to “game the system” ~ This means using transparent or hidden keywords on your site, for instance. All of the important search engines will quickly send your website to the “sandbox” if they discover you’re trying to pull a fast one.
These are just some basics of Search Engine Optimization we’ve garnered over the some 10 years we’ve been in internet development. Again, successful SEO, site optimization that returns qualified prospects to your site, is a long term process requiring technical know-how and hard work.
More importantly, SEO is also the process of attempting to attain page 1 placement for a website on all the popular search engines.
