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SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of developing, customizing or revamping a website so that it achieves and sustains a high ranking on major search engines (such as Google™ or Yahoo®) for important keywords or key phrases. SEO makes your site easier for the search engines to find and rank, moving your site to the top of the search engines.
Organic SEO involves using different techniques to rank a website higher on a search engine listing. This can include optimizing page text for optimal keyword to content ratio, optimizing images with Alt tags and adding Meta tags to each of the pages. Also, organic SEO includes listing your business in free directories, such as Google Local and Bing Local.
A website is like a virtual sales person, making money for you 24 hours a day. If people find your website from your other advertising efforts; such as print, tv or radio, that is only part of the battle. According to Jupiter Media, over 64% of internet users use search engines and NOT print media to find what they want. That is where SEO comes into play. It makes your website much easier for people to find when they search the web. Make sure that your website has the best chance to make your company money. Simply put: DON’T forget about 64% of your potential customers!
Creating a multi-functional lead capturing website is only half the battle. Your clients are searching Google, Yahoo and Bing looking for your services. If you aren’t listed on the first three pages of the major search engines, you are losing potential customers. SEO is a crucial and central part of any online marketing strategy.
By being on the first page of Google Search results, your traffic almost triples and your conversion rate doubles.
89% of internet searchers only click on results displayed on the FIRST page!
What are "White Hat" techniques? And why does that matter?
White hat SEO is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to game the algorithm. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines’ algorithms, or by a manual site review.
How long does Organic SEO take to show results?
Organic SEO can take up to 12 months to mature, mainly depending on the age of the domain name. If you have an existing site or a domain name that has been registered longer than 12 months the process is considerably faster. This is due to Google’s "sandbox" rule that all new domain names do not get displayed on the first page of the search engine results page for 8-9 months. Typically, if your website has been up for 6-12 months, or the domain has aged for that same period, you can expect your Organic SEO campaign to begin showing results as quickly as 1-2 months.
How much does Organic SEO Cost?
Cost depends on the amount of keywords and how competitive your particular market is for your selected keywords. Long-tail keywords (for example "Cheap refinance for bad credit history versus "Refinance") have less competition than generic keywords and when speaking in PPC terms have a lower cost per click (CPC) and a higher click-through rate (CTR) making them not only cost less but yield a higher return on investment.
Can you optimize an all Flash website?
This question is currently being debated throughout the SEO community. Our stance is there are ways to optimize an all Flash site, however it is our experience that it will never rank as well as a site that is not using all Flash. Google does continue to improve its methods for indexing flash sites, however there are still many limitations. Read more here >>
What are Backlinks, Reciprocal Links and Page Rank?
Backlinks are links that other website’s have listed on their site that point back to yours. Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links. The number of backlinks to your website is one factor that search engines measure as an indicator of the popularity or importance of your website. Backlinks can either been one-way or reciprocal.
Reciprocal Links are when someone puts a link on their site to your site and you in turn put a link on your site to their site. Most search engines look for a good balance of both one-way and reciprocal links, however one-way links are generally more important.
It is important to note that ALL website links, whether in-bound or reciprocal, are from sites that pertain to your specific industry or service and that are in the same context as your site. For instance, if your website focuses on selling flowers the search engines would not think your site was relevant for your search term "floral design" if all of your inbound links came from pet stores.
That’s not to say you can’t have any links from pet stores; keep in mind that if both sites (yours and the one linking to you) have content geared toward your keyword topic, the backlink will be considered relevant and will have strong influence on your search engine rankings. It’s a good idea to focus on your industry and look for directories related to your particular service.
Another important factor is the anchor text of the backlink. Anchor text is the descriptive labeling of the hyperlink as it appears on a web page. Search engine robots (i.e., spiders, crawlers, etc.) examine the anchor text to evaluate how relevant it is to the content on a web page. Anchor text and web page content congruency are highly weighted in search engine results page (SERP) rankings of your web page with respect to any given keyword query by a search engine user. Simply put, when submitting your website link to a directory, vendor or any other site, don’t just put your company name. Be creative and use your keywords like "Floral Design from YourCompanyName".
Page Rank (PR) is a link ranking tool, named after Larry Page,that is used by Google which assigns a numerical weighting to each linked web page with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. Page rank is assigned from 1-10, 1 being the least important to 10 being the most. Page Rank plays a very important role when speaking about Backlinks and Reciprocal links. For instance, if you have 100 inbound links that are all a Page Rank of 1 you probably will not notice any "love" from the search engines like you would if they were all a 5. The same holds true if your site has a PR of 4 and you link to 100 sites that have a PR of 1 because when you link ANYWHERE outside of your own site you actually give away half of your PR to the site you are linking to.
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