What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the act of editing and optimizing a site to provide the maximum potential of ranking and traffic. SEO has become as important, if not more important than the design of the site itself. Truly optimizing a site is very time consuming and contains very many variables ranging from the content on the site to the way other sites and search engines view your site.
Why should I optimize my site?
If you simply design a website and place it on the internet without consideration given to optimization, then your site will miss very many opportunities to be seen by the public. Search engines have a main concern to produce relevant results to a searcher so as to strive to become the number one search engine. Surely you have heard the commercials by Yahoo! Advertising that they will return the most relevant results when using their service to find what you need. So you can see how important it is to optimize your site to appeal to the search engines so they may use your site as a result of a web surfer searching on the Internet.
So how does one optimize a website?
First and foremost, you need to have a direction. Ask yourself, if I were a consumer, and I wanted to find my product on a search engine, what would I type? This is only the first step, but should help you in determining how you are going to optimize your site. The content on the site is very important, and you will want to know what subjects to concentrate on while writing the copy of your site. You will want to make the information on your website relevant to the terms that you have chosen so as to appeal to any potential web surfer.
Oh, I just need keywords then?
Creating a list of keywords is only the first, and a very small part of the optimization process. Appealing to the search engines also involves making the rest of the Internet aware of your presence by gaining inbound links to your site, and providing genuinely relevant content for your information or services. Simply implementing the keywords meta tag, will bring very little if any benefit. Most search engines no longer even give any attention to the keywords.
A friend told me that I can just put my terms all over my site, and the search engines will find me most relevant.
Optimizing a website used to involve placing your desired search terms throughout the website so that a search engine crawler would see their liberal use. This is known as “keyword stuffing.” However, gone are the days when this was good enough. Obviously, your search terms will appear on your homepage as they are likely terms that you would normally use when discussing your area of business, but you don’t want to repeat so many of these terms that your text starts to sound repetitive or incoherent. Keyword stuffing will get some benefit from Yahoo!, but will not be the determining factor in your ranking and will help very little in other search engines like MSN or Google. Too much of it will also produce a potential penalty from all of the search engines.
My friend also told me that I could implement keyword stuffing by writing my keywords all over my site in the same color font as my background. Is this a good idea?
No, with special emphasis on the ‘N.O.’ Placing your search terms, or any information on your site that cannot be seen is known as spamming. You never want to implement a practice that involves tricking the search engines into thinking that your site is something that it is not. A good rule of thumb is to create a website that people will enjoy and find informative. The search engines have become very competent in detecting tricks and cheats, and if that search engine feels that you are doing something solely for their benefit, they will likely penalize your rankings.
You mentioned inbound links. What is that?
Inbound links are any links to your site from another websites. Another part of optimizing your site includes your presence to the rest of the internet. Google has been known to use your inbound link quality and number in determining your site?s relevancy and can help in ranking. The idea is to have a link to your site on other sites that are relevant to your subject, and are already ranking well in the search engines. Be aware that there are many services that offer “Thousands of inbound links within 24 hours,” or some other ridiculous promise. These are known as “link farms.” This also goes with the idea of spamming. Getting quality links involves a lot of time and effort, but can pay off two fold. First, if the site that carries your link is indeed a quality site, and it is ranking well in Google, then Google will show a little love to your site. Also, if that site gets a lot of hits, this will help bring some of their traffic to your site as well. It may sometimes be necessary to place a link to someone?s site in order for that site to return the favor. Because of the mutual benefit, most other websites are all too obliged to become a link partner with you. But remember, shortcuts will only bring shortcomings.
Ok. This all sounds easy. Why should I pay you to do this stuff for me?
Optimizing a website can become very time consuming and work intensive. A legitimate search engine optimizer will not use any shortcuts or shady tactics. In starting SEO Factor, we are implementing the years of experience gained while offering SEO for a large website design and marketing company, that in turn provided optimization services to many small business websites. Through years of experience and research, we have adopted some of the best and most effective practices to rank your site. By letting professionals handle the SEO of your site, you are ensuring that you will achieve the maximum potential for your website?s traffic.
You don’t necessarily have to hire SEO Factor to do these things for you. There are many many legitimate professionals that can indeed make good on a promise to properly optimize your site. There are many larger companies as well, but consider that a larger company will have a lot of overhead, driving their prices higher.
Can SEO Factor guarantee that my site will be number one for the search of any keyword of my choice?
No. But then again, nobody can. Promising a ranking under any given term is not something that can be achieved very readily. However, we have proven that, through optimizing sites, we can indeed bring a large increase in relevant traffic and rankings in the search engines under relevant terms. SEO is in large part a practice of methods proven to work in the past. We take the procedures and trends of the past and apply the methods that work to the sites of the future. However, search engines, and the way they rank sites, change all the time.
There are indeed companies that offer a “guarantee” ranking. But if you read the fine print, the most common guarantee states that if you don’t get the agreed upon ranking, you will get your money back, or some other form of compensation. The word “guarantee” is a form of marketing in this case. We feel that this method of marketing is like saying “We guarantee that your car will run forever. If it doesn’t, you’ll have to trade it in for a new one.” For that reason, we do not offer a guarantee. Even our Website Promotion service does not state a “guarantee,” but a higher level of optimization and marketing for your site.
So, what are the first steps?
Our SEO service will involve consultation with you to decide what terms will result in the best ranking and traffic to your site. We will research desired terms and compile a list of other keywords and terms that will best match your business to pull in qualified visits. Once we have the list of terms compiled, we will begin the optimization process.
I think I would like you to optimize my website. How much will it cost?
The optimization of a website varies on many different factors. The prices of our SEO and marketing services are setup so that even the budding business can afford them. Look over our Optimization and Promotion services to determine which one works best for your needs. If you have any questions, you may also call 1-904-214-6588, or email us at info@.
You have optimized my site, and it has been a month without any increase in my traffic or my ranking.
As stated previously, SEO is very time consuming. Simply optimizing a site is not good enough. The search engines will need time to crawl and re index your website accordingly. This being said, it may be beneficial to take part in one of our Promotion Services. This will insure that the optimization and traffic of your site does not waiver.
If you take part in our Website Promotion Service, there will still be a period of time where your site is not ranked. After and during the optimization process, your site will be monitored by us and continually optimized as needed. To see an increase in traffic or ranking can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months.