Search
Engine Optimization Whitepaper Volume I Click
here for Volume II
Understanding
SEO - Your Questions Answered
Overview
Search
engine optimization (SEO) has gained credibility and is now vitally
important in a company's effort to conduct business online, to build
traffic and increase revenues.
SEO is
also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Positioning
(SEP) and various other titles. SEO is a service that "optimizes" or
prepares your web site in order for it to be spidered, indexed and ranked
by major search engines. Over 400 million searches are performed EVERY
DAY on the various engines, and business owners today are seeing that
they need to take a piece of that action and be prominently listed to
be found by the potential customers performing these searches. Not being
ranked prominently literally means giving business to your competitors
that are ranked!
The following
report is designed to share information with you about the service,
techniques used and questions you must ask any SEO company before working
with them. Becoming an educated consumer will help you make the best
possible SEO decisions.
SEO services
have many wonderful benefits, and a long term commitment to a correct
SEO campaign, done properly with targeted keywords and ethical techniques
can produce great returns on your investment.
SEO
Firms
There are
hundreds of SEO firms out there today, all varying in skill level as
well as experience. Our goal is to help you learn what is important
in an SEO company and to know what questions to ask to compare services
and benefits to you.
There are
SEO companies that focus only on SEO, and some say that targeted focus
will deliver the most benefit to you. We respectfully disagree with
that opinion and feel that your best bet is with a SEO company that
can look at your big picture and help in other important areas, such
as web design and maintenance, other marketing techniques and technical
help. True, the company must have experience in all areas and should
be able to provide references, case studies and samples of their work
to earn your trust and respect. The main fact to remember here is just
because other people in the company have the ability to help you in
other areas, does not mean that your SEO consultant will be any less
focused on their task at hand. A company that has staff experienced
in other areas can only maximize your potential online and also work
with you on various other projects.
A lot of
SEO companies have a cookie cutter method, and don't supply you with
hands on support and customer service. We feel if you are going to entrust
a company with that type of investment, they must be available to answer
questions, and give you personalized service.
Be very
wary of companies that promise results that seem too good to be true,
they usually are. Companies that assure you they can gain numerous top
5 or top 10 rankings within days are most likely using less than ethical
techniques that can actually harm your site and result in you being
banned from the engines in the future. It is realistic to expect numerous
top 20 rankings within a period of a few weeks to 4 months (depending
on past ranking history, site SEO readiness and various other factors).
Be sure
to ask any SEO company what methods and techniques they use to achieve
your rankings, and when you can expect to receive them by. Read further
to see an overview of acceptable techniques.
Paid Inclusion
Paid inclusion refers to fee based listings in engines
and directories, such as: Yahoo!, LookSmart, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, Alta
Vista, Lycos, Inktomi and FAST. Fees range from a per URL cost of $20-$30
for each page of your site you want included to an annual fee of $300
for a directory listing in Yahoo!
When looking into paid inclusion programs, you'll
always want to know some of the recent history with the search engine
or directory. Be careful not to put yourself in a situation where you
are liable for higher fees than you agreed to, or where you can be automatically
transferred to a PPC model. It is best if your SEO Company will handle
these paid inclusions for you. You are often still responsible for the
fees, but your SEO Company should handle the submission process for
you.
Service Components
SEO services have evolved into a complex process
that involves staying aware daily of the changes in the engines and
their criteria and utilizing many optimization techniques to ensure
the best possible rankings.
Aside from optimizations, it is important to have
the basic key elements of your site meet the engines criteria - essentially
ensuring that your site is "SEO ready" or "SEO friendly."
If you take 2 sites - one SEO friendly and one not,
optimize them both identically and submit them at the same time - you
will see better rankings faster on the site that is SEO friendly. The
engines require that your site be valid from a SEO friendliness perspective
and reward with higher rankings for compliance with their criteria.
Criteria is subject to change and an effective SEO Company will stay
informed daily about the most current information.
Current criteria is as follows; your copy should
be high in keyword rich text, and there should be at least 5 pages (Content
Is King - relevant keyword rich text is their most important criteria),
your site should be static and not have dynamically delivered content
that the engines can't read, header tags and ALT tags also draw spiders
attention to your site, Flash and over usage of graphics also pose a
problem for the engines, sites in frames can often not be read, as well
as various other criteria.
Keywords
Keyword research is the first and most vital step
in the SEO process. Keywords are the foundation for your campaign and
can make or break it.
You will want a company that is thorough in it's
research, a company that asks your input, researches your competitors
and gives you final approval on their recommended list.
It cannot be emphasized enough that TARGETED keywords
are the only way to go. Your keywords must be relevant to your content
and should attract the kind of traffic you can actually convert into
customers. Let this example illustrate for you the benefit in targeted
keywords.
If you sell diesel, and you select the following
keywords: diesel, cars, (name of specific) ________ diesel, and maintenance
- what would you expect from those keywords? People often think that
(in this example) the keywords cars and maintenance are a big coop.
Think of all that traffic. Now let's look at this way, what good is
traffic if it isn't targeted? Sure you may catch the attention of a
few people that accidentally wander onto your site - but what are the
chances that someone who types cars into an engine are actually looking
to purchase diesel. Can you see that you have essentially wasted a keyword
here? Whereas, if you select (name of specific)_________ diesel as a
keyword - can you see where, yes you may get less traffic but that traffic
would actually be looking for exactly what you offer - therefore that
traffic is automatically more valuable to you.
The point of our little tangent is simply that the
keywords you select are key (no pun intended) and the proper energy,
time and experience needs to be used to select these words.
Body Text
Body text is THE key component in the your SEO strategy.
Your text MUST include the keywords and phrases that tell about your
business, its products and services. Be sure your SEO Company will analyze
your body text for keyword ratio and relevancy. Without this very important
correct ratio of keyword rich text, you will not see the results you
are hoping for and could be achieving, no matter how talented the SEO
Company is.
Title Tags
The title tag is one of the most important components
of SEO since it is given great consideration by all the search engines.
The title is also important because it is usually the hyper linked sentence
that leads to the site from the search engine results pages and users
must be enticed to click on it. It is crucial to include your company's
top key terms within the title tag.
Hidden Text
Hidden text is another spamming technique that is
easily detectable. Often people change the font color to the same as
the background, and then SEO companies can fill the pages with enormous
amounts of key term text that some believe is appealing to the search
engine spiders. This will result in you being banned from the engines
- do not allow your SEO company to employ this method.
Cloaking
Cloaking is a spamming technique that uses specific
software programs to send search engine spiders to alternative pages
that are not seen by the user. These pages mislead the spider, allowing
it to deliver the results based on these pages rather than the actual
pages the public sees on the site. Spamming/cloaking is a very serious
offense in the eyes of the engines, and usually results in your site
being permanently banned.
Site Maps
Site Maps are highly effective when created properly.
They are a keyword rich static page that lists all the pages and topics
on your site, with links for your visitors and the engines to follow
through out your site.
Promotional Domains
Promotional domains are used as a secondary, yet
integrated domain location for the engines to visit and rank. If the
primary domain is not SEO friendly, or the owner does not want the original
site altered, this is an effective technique. You must ensure that you
own the new site and optimizations and that they reside on your server.
Meta Tags
Meta tags are the descriptive terms used within
the HTML code of a web page. Your meta tags act as a summary of the
content a search engine spider might find on that page and were once
one of the main factors behind great placements. Current algorithmic
studies have shown that the meta tag is no longer such an important
part of your optimizations. Although most engines don't use meta tags
in their ranking algorithms, they do display them in the results which
can help with getting people to click onto your site. Overall, the engines
are unpredictable and criteria changes, so keeping the meta tags strong,
relevant and descriptive of your content is too important to forego.
Reporting
Ensure that you are receiving a detailed and easy
to read and understand report from your SEO Company at least once a
month so you may track results.
Submission
Your submissions to the top engines should be done
manually and based on each engines time frame. This is very important.
Conclusion
There are many SEO companies, and techniques that
should and shouldn't be used. Stay informed, ask questions and be involved
in your campaign. Best wishes for your success online!
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On
a one time, yearly, bi-yearly or monthly bases System IC can optimize
and submit your main web page. For better SEM results we can optimize
each individual web in the entire site and submit each page individually
to the Internet's major search engines.
SEO
rates consists of a one time set up and initial submission fee per web
page. 1 year contracts are available at on a per year, per page bases;
this includes monthly search engine submission.
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Web Marketing Information & Statistics
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more details on web promotions and related SEO strategies call (208)
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