SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

Your website's success is important to us!

SEO is the process of getting your site to rank higher for specific keywords and phrases within the top search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The difference between a high ranking such as #1 and ranking #10 is significant.

Past research shows a drop in clickthroughs of 50% just for being #2. And it continues to decrease at a similar rate the lower you rank. Anything beyond the top half of the second page is just not going to get you many visitors for most keywords or key phrases.

There are two main categories of search engine optimization. You will need to address both in order to achieve good search engine ranking results.

Onsite SEO
Offsite SEO

Onsite SEO includes everything done to your website while offsite SEO includes all the different types of linking available. I highly recommend that onsite SEO is done at the time of website development. Offsite SEO would be a part of an ongoing SEO program.

You need to build an SEO strategy that maximizes your goals. If you have multiple products, services, or audiences, you may not be able to achieve high rankings for everything with one site. In general, every site and every page needs to be focused.

it's important to understand that search engines are not going to tell you specifically how to optimize your site to rank higher. It takes a lot of time and effort to gain the knowledge and experience to make good search engine optimization decisions.

LINK BUILDING

Every link is a vote for your site

Want a high ranking web site, you will need to win a popularity contest. The top search engines like Google, place a lot of value on trusted and relevant sites that link to your site. The operartive phrase here is "trusted and relevant". Gone are the days when you can buy spammy useless links to rank high.

Link building is a labor intensive job, there's no way to get around it. If you want quality links, you basically have to make a sales call to every owner or webmaster of sites you think might help.

It is also important not to build links to fast. A new site with 1000 links is going to raise Google's eyebrows and may get you knocked out of their results.

Link building service is available as part of any ongoing SEO work you may choose to have done. Costs depend on your goals, how old your site is and how big it is among other factors.

OPTIMIZED WEB CONTENT CREATION

Saying the right things in the right places

Content is king and you need a good amount of it if you want to capture the most traffic. More and more searchers are typing in very long search phrases to narrow the search results. You need alot of content in order to rank for these long phrases, commonly called long tail keywords in the industry.

Even if you do not rank #1 or even on the first page for a target keword, quality content can get you traffic. This is because very few sites optimize for their site for very long tail key phrases. Therefore, with the right page optimization and the right content, you can get good, relevant traffic to your site.

LINK BAIT

Create compelling value and you will get links naturally

The best kind of link building in my opinion is link bait. Now it sounds kind of slimey, but it really is a quality method of gaining links. Basically, all it means is building some value in your site that makes other sites want to link to you.

It could be the vast amount of quality content you offer about a subject - maybe you offer an encyclopedia of your industry. It could be a really cool interactive game or a free giveaway. The possibilities are endless.

I love this method because it is natural link building. I always recommend spending your SEO budget on creating something very unique and useful whenever possible.

SEO PROCESS

The SEO process is not a rigid process. Since all sites are not created equal, not all sites will need to go through the same process. A site selling one product to one very specific audience will require far less work than one selling multiple products or services, more complex product or services, and/or to many different types of audiences.

This process is typical of most small business non-ecommerce websites and is provided to ensure great communication and great results. As always, if you would like to provide input into the process, please feel free to make your suggestions.

Discovery

For many websites this can be accomplished simply by reviewing your existing site and reviewing your completed client questionnaire that we provide. But for very large sites we will need to meet to discuss your goals, site statistics, competition, geographical area, and your company's products or services.

Everyone must complete a client questionnaire in order to ensure the correct and best plan is developed. For new sites, the discovery is all included in the web design process and an SEO report quote will be generated with the Web Development proposal.

Proposal

Once the discovery is completed, we will send you a proposal with details of our recommendations for researching your site's search engine optimization needs along with the cost for the analysis, and suggested ongoing optimization, monitoring, and reporting.

Agreement

If both parties are satisfied with the proposal, the agreement is signed and the full payment is made to begin work. The initial agreement covers the search engine optimization research. Any implementation of the recommendations would require additional investments.

Report

We analyze the current landscape for your industry based on the geographic area you wish to target and the competitors that interest you. Your report generally includes recommended keywords, priority keywords, site changes needed, your rank for keyword, and our proprietary estimate of the degree of difficulty in obtaining a high ranking for the priority keywords.