SEO
Without Quality SEO, You Got Nothin’!
SEO….three little letters that can make or break your website. SEO stands for search engine optimization. All the websites we design follow SEO standards, which is very important to rank well in the top search engines like Google. You’ve probably heard the term SEO, but may not have a good understanding of its importance.
What is the first thing you do when you want to find something online? You go to Google, Yahoo! or Bing, right? Type in what you are looking for, something like…..snails for sale…..hit enter and wait to see how many hundreds of thousands of sites turn up. The sites that show at the top have been optimized, in other words, the search engine knows that those sites have the information you want.
It seems there is nothing under the sun that does not have a website associated with it, which is why optimizing your website for search engines is so important. Let’s face it, if you are not in the top 10 in a search engine return, your site is not going to be clicked. When your site is properly and effectively optimized, you will get “free” traffic because your site will rank high enough in the search engines that viewers will find you through searches.
There’s a Right Way and a Wrong Way
As with anything, there is a right way and wrong way to do it. We always do SEO the right way. We make the SEO process easy and painless so you can continue to develop your SEO strategies even after your site launches.
The wrong way to do SEO:
Ignoring Google’s headline formatting preferences
Leaving out meta tags
Using keywords and keyword phrases that are too competitive or irrelevant
Non descriptive URLs that contain long query strings
Buying links to your site…..Google will discover this eventually and penalize you
The right way to do SEO:
Format headline tags properly
Properly formatted URLs for each page
Give each page a keyword rich description so the search engines can see it
Use relevant keywords that have low competition
Get links to your site naturally by providing excellent, relevant content that other web masters will link to
There’s On Page SEO and Off Page SEO
SEO can be off page or on page, what’s the difference?
On page SEO: All the optimization that is done directly on your website via the design and content as well as hierarchy structure and coding.
Off page SEO: All SEO that takes place in other areas of the Internet such as links from blog postings to your site, social media and link building.
What are Keywords and What do I do with them?
Keywords determine what your site is about. For example, if you have a garden supply website your content would naturally contain words and phrases such as flowers, flower garden, vegetable garden, how to grow herbs, organic fertilizer, how to make compost, etc.
Keywords are used throughout your site and search engines notice the pattern so they come to know that your site is all about gardening. This way when the viewer is searching for gardening information, the goal is to have your site rank high in the search engines.
Depending on your niche, it can be difficult to be at the top of the heap because of all the competition. This is why keyword research is so important. Keyword research will give you ideas for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for. The goal is to find keywords with low competition so when someone searches for this keyword, the search engine has already found it on your site and this allows your site to rank highly.