SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (S.E.O.) - Getting Found On The Internet

Getting found on the internet is an important part of having a website. You have to compete with your competitions' websites, large corporations with deep pockets and of course unscrupulous website promoters who try to cheat the system.

There are basically two ways to gain rank in the search engines. 1) Is through "Pay Per Click" (Sponsored) advertising (Notice the thin column on the right side of any Google search result), and 2) the other boils down to good website development, the components of which I detail in the following paragraphs. What must be remembered is that there are never any guarantees in SEO results. The reason for this is that there are too many factors which are simply out of a webmasters control.

How Search Engines Rank Websites
Let me first say that you can realistically generate quality traffic to your website, however this can be an extremely in depth subject. Our treatment of it here is only intended to be introductory. Search engine companies employ advanced degreed programming staff to write proprietary algorithms to determine how websites are ranked. These algorithms are extremely complex, and ever changing. They are meant to level the playing field for all websites, and the codes for the algorithms are written so as to make it as difficult as possible for people to cheat them. When you consider the 100's of millions of websites in existence, you quickly realize why it is so difficult to gain rank.

Again, having said that, you can realistically generate quality traffic to your website.

Keywords and Phrases
A great tool we use for generating traffic to your website is by correctly developing keywords and phrases. So, before approaching the search engines for ranking, the most important thing we do is make sure that the actual content that you have on your website reflects what you do. It sounds easy but you would be surprised how easily this can be missed by talking all around the subject of your business but never actually summarizing those keywords or phrases that search engines need to pick up. These keywords and phrases are then used in conjunction with META tags, and manual search engine submission discussed below.

Working in our favor is the fact that search engines have already painstakingly catalogued and researched this information based on the relevant key phrases people typically search for as well as how many competitors are aiming for that same phrase. So from here we research keywords and phrases related to search engines and then develop a keyword effectiveness index which will help us determine the top five key phrases we should be implementing into your website. Keywords and phrases are necessary, but are only a part of the proprietary algorithms search engines use to rank your site.

META Tags
META tags are keywords and phrases selected by us in the same fashion as keywords and phrases are in the previous article, which are then converted into code, to provide search engines information about your website. They help search engines categorize them correctly, but are not visible to a user looking at your site. META tags again are necessary, but are only a part of the proprietary algorithms search engines use to rank your site.

Search Engine Submission
So once all the basics have been done; all the necessary and very relevant research and adjustments to your website, we submit your website to the main search engines. Special care is also taken toward ranking within the top 3 Search Engines as they are used for results by various secondary and tertiary engines - of which there are thousands.

Name Commonness vs. Uncommonness
Some of SEO boils down to luck. For instance, if you consider how many construction companies exist in America, and how many websites they have, you can imagine how difficult it would be for one of them to gain rank over another. However, the owner of the hypothetical "Szukalski Construction Company" will automatically have the advantage over "Smith Construction Company". This is a bit of a crude example but it really is great food for thought when considering the generation of your own keywords and phrases.

Synthesis with other advertising
Let's face it, having a well developed website boils down to another form of advertising. Nearly every business and organization has business cards, letterhead, and perhaps a dozen other forms of advertising they employ. When your website address is combined with these other forms of advertising, you will generate not only a significant volume of traffic, but quality volume to your website. Once your website visitors arrive at your site, they are now in "your world". The internet experience they have there is completely and totally what you want it to be. So for the cost of having a well developed website, you are able to leverage a great deal of high quality communication to your potential, and existing customers.