SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the science/art of making your site show up in the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc.) when someone types in a search phrase that your site should show up for.

SEO is possibly the most complex and rapidly evolving aspect of Internet marketing.  It is also currently the most important.  Our goal is to make it so the search engines can easily determine what is valuable on each page of your site for its users.  Here is how that happens:

10% of it occurs on your site.  We make sure that your web pages use the keywords we want to rank for in the title, body text, and in the code.  This lets Google know what the page is about.

90% of it occurs off of your site.  Google considers what happens off of your site to be more important because typically you have less control over it.

Some Off-Site SEO Techniques:

  • External Link Building – Getting high quality links (that say the right things) from other sites pointing back to your site is essential.  Each link counts as a vote in the eyes of Google.  These links often come in the forms of referrals from other websites and the links embedded in our written content.
  • Using Off-site indexes (like Yahoo! Local) – Regional indexes are important because oftentimes they already show up in the search engines for important keyword phrases.  Getting listed on them (with a high quality testimonial when possible) can be a fast way to get visitors.  Non-regional indexes can also be a source of traffic, but more often they provide a high-quality link which helps your rankings.
  • Social Media Sites (Web 2.0) – The search engines love social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, Squidoo, and Wikipedia.  This is because most of their content is created by real people as opposed to companies.   Most of these people write the content just to connect with others and share information.  It makes the web a better, more informative resource.  We can use these sites to help our website get traffic and increase our rankings as long as we limit the overt marketing messages and keep our contributions very informational.  There are risks associated with Web2.0 Marketing but the potential benefit for using social media for business is astounding and should not be ignored.