Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The Challenge
If you want to be found in the search engines, it is important that you add search engine optimization to your action list. In a nutshell, search engine optimization--or SEO for short--is the process of making your web pages "search engine friendly."

SEO is a relatively new marketing industry. Although there are many purported experts, most of us who call ourselves SEO specialists are learning. The search engines are constantly in flux, so SEO techniques that worked yesterday may not necessarily work tomorrow. As a result, it is exceedingly important to keep up with the fervent pace of the Internet, and the search engines in particular.

The Risks
One of the frustrations of search engine placement is that your rankings are constantly fluctuating. The key to a successful search engine optimization campaign is creativity, perseverance and practice, practice, practice. Do not try to fool the search engines by "tricking" them with unsavoury techniques (e.g., keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text) because you will risk having your web site lose favour with the search engines, or worse, getting banned altogether.

The Solution
If you are developing a new web site or redesigning an old one, now is a good time to think about search engine optimization. We guide our customers through the entire process of optimizing your web pages for search engines. We will customize your SEO strategy so your ideal customer finds you.

Sample Service Overview

NOTE: Please understand that the following is a sample service overview. No two sites are alike. We achieve our best results when we build a custom plan around the specific market needs and realities we encounter during the research and discovery stages of your project. Call us today to set up a consultation

"BASIC" MONTHLY SEO MAINTENANCE - $150/Month
(Based on approx. 2 hours of work on site and in research)

• "Sanitization" of all or most of the main landing pages on the site.
• Research of comparable sites, competitive sites etc., to see what phrases and/or points of focus they are using to attract Google searchers to their site
• Consists mostly of purging unnecessary key words/phrases, fixing broken links etc.
• Renaming key pages to reflect the page content.
• Set up analytic software on the site to monitor progress on a week by week basis.

Monthly Thereafter: (Based on approx. 2 hours per month)

• Ongoing monthly process of renaming pages until process complete
• Begin process of naming images and "Alt Tags" to reflect subject matter of image and how it relates to the product and/or service offered.
• Monitoring success of page edits by reviewing analytic reports weekly.
• Editing page content to enhance search results by addition of heading tags, bolding of key words/phrases and adding such to the content as necessary.
• Making some adjustments on various areas of the site content as indicated by analytic reports.

"ADVANCED" MONTHLY SEO MAINTENANCE
($500 First month, $150 per month thereafter)

(Based on approx. 6 – 7 hours of work on site and in research for the first month, 2 hours per month thereafter)

• Complete analysis of site content, page by page.
• Thorough analysis of competitive sites to determine the structure and content of their sites that make them attractive to Google searches.
• Complete "Sanitization" of the site and all pages therein to eliminate all coding, tagging, key word/phrases, page naming conventions etc.
• Installation of analytic software to monitor progress week by week.

• Complete review of analytic report weekly
• Making some adjustments on various areas of the site content as indicated by analytic reports.
• Ongoing editing of page content to enhance search results by addition of heading tags, bolding of key words/phrases and adding such to the content as necessary

Web Site Search Engine Optimization Procedure Summary

Proper search engine optimization (SEO) procedures will place your site high in the rankings for all to see, like a billboard placed along a busy highway. The ideal result is on the front page of Google. Google is by far the most popular search engine used in the world today.

Search Engines, such as Google and MSN, each have their own method of ranking web sites for a given key word search. These ranking methods use a mathematical algorithm that they keep secret and that they also frequently change. A search for the same key words or phrases on different search engines will produce different results.

The search engine companies do, however, give web designers suggestions and guidelines for web site construction and layout to optimize their sites for searches, but the specific algorithm is kept quite top secret.

Despite this, many web designers are unaware of or ignore the field of search engine optimization. The most beautiful web site, if not optimized for search engines, will remain undiscovered in the vast cluttered spaces of the internet. It is akin to placing a beautifully illustrated billboard in the middle of a forest.

Web site SEO design procedures involve the following key parameters:

• Design - Making the site easy to read by search engines.

Design:

A web site must be designed so that the web crawling programs used by search engines can enter, read, and visit the entire site. These web crawlers can not read graphics such as photos, graphic menus, or Flash programs. Many web designers are graphic artists and not programmers. They like graphics and Flash.

If a site uses a large graphic image mapped for embedded links, which is very common, the web crawler is not able to visit these links. Secondary plain text links or a site map page using text links should be incorporated in the site to enable search engines to completely crawl the site. Many designers are not aware of these search engine limitations.

The web site should be kept shallow, meaning that the other pages of content on the site can be reached from the home page in one or two steps. This again facilitates search engine crawlers. A site map accessible from the front page using a text link helps in this regard.

Proper use of HTML code should be used and then checked with the www protocol. Wrong use of HTML code will inhibit web crawlers.

Content:

A web site with a lot of related text content will rank higher than a site with very little content. To a search engine, lots of text means that the site is valuable and relevant. It is more likely to contain what the searcher is looking for. Programmers are often at a disadvantage in this regard because the site's content or subject is not their field of expertise.

The content has to be properly labeled with Text Headers. These should give a synopsis of the page content using key words. Search engines give weight to Text Headers.

Photos, while not readable to a search engine, should be labelled with key words using "alt codes" and "title codes" in the HTML programming. This is a very laborious task which many programmers choose to ignore. The programmer may not know the content of a picture on a technically oriented web site and thus the alt code and title code will be left unused.

On the internet, size matters. A big site will generally rank higher than a small site.

On the internet, change is good. A site that remains static or unchanged for a long period of time will lose its ranking position. A site that has not changed in months looks like it is dead. A site that is constantly being modified, or having content added to it, looks more relevant to the search engines.

Key Words:

This involves knowing what words and phrases your web site visitors are going to use when they look for you on the internet. So you must put yourself into their shoes. You must use the language and terms that they are familiar with. These may be different from what you would use. If you use the wrong key words on your site, it is like having your sign written in the wrong language for the viewers.

Web sites should be labelled with HTML Key Word Meta Tags. These are lines of code that search engines read that summarize the sites topical content using the key words or phrases. These can include the products being sold and the geographical area covered. Each web page can have up to 250 characters of key word code.

Many programmers are unfamiliar with the area of expertise of the web site's content and are thus in a poor position to choose key words. Many sites do not have the HTML Key Word Meta Tags installed in the code. They do not affect the appearance of the site, so many programmers do not include them.

Summary

The internet is the fastest growing marketing tool in the world. Like any good tool, a website must first be designed properly, it must be managed properly, and finally it must be maintained to keep it in good working order.

A web site designed with search engine optimization allows an organization to use their web site to its maximum ability and get maximum exposure.

The site must then be maintained with an ongoing process of content development in order to keep it ranking well with search engines.