Web Sites and Ezine Design and Hosting
About Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) prepares your site for an improved ranking, based on keywords that people are using to search for your products and services.The goal of improved ranking is to move a site to the first page of the list of sites in search engine results, without paying for the privilege. Being listed on the first page is important, because sites listed on subsequent pages will frequently not be visited by searchers.
Search Engines and Favored Placement
Sites presented in the right column or high-lighted at the top on the search engine response page are called "sponsored sites". Sponsored sites are paying an advertising fee to the search engine owner in exchange for favored placement. Advertising fees are based on the number of people who "click-thru" to the listed site multiplied by the "price per click". This form of advertising is often called "pay per click".Non-sponsored sites, those not paying for listing position, are the subject of Search Engine Optimization and the information that follows. These sites depend on other factors, such as popularity, content, and currency for their favorable ranking.
Search Engines and Keywords
Search engines respond to keywords typed by the searcher. To get a better match, searchers often enter keyword phrases rather than single words.Search Engines use proprietary algorithms, such as PageRank, to order the sites that are returned. These consider the use of keywords and other factors to determine the relevancy of a site. The exact factors that are used and the weight given to the different factors is proprietary and subject to change without notice.
It is poor practice to try to trick search engines into a high rating by falsifying any of the information on a web site. Such attempts usually backfire and lead to lowered ranking.
Search Engines People Use
In the past, several dozen search engines competed for market share. Now, three large search engines are used to perform more than 90% of all Internet searches.- Yahoo
- MSN
We don't recommend considering others for Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engine Registration
Search Engine Registration is generally not recommended for existing web sites, unless they are undergoing a significant update. Registering a web site with search engines was a frequently used past practice that no longer necessary. The dominant search engines will find and catalog your site without registering it.
Search Engine Optimization and Registration: What We Do
1. Assess your site for search-ability
Some sites are not search engine ready. We do not attempt to optimize sites that are built with Macromedia Flash nor frames. These technologies are incompatible with search engines. In such cases, we will recommend that you have the site rebuilt with search-ability as the highest priority.
Search Engine Optimization will always result in noticeable changes to your site. If you think your site is fine as it is and are not ready to discuss changes, then we recommend that you pay for advertising in order to obtain an improved site ranking.
2. Understand terminology used for products and services in your target market
We develop knowledge of the terminology used by your target market in describing your products and services so to characterize the keywords that people are will use to access these products and services.
We obtain your agreement on up to three keyword phrases for optimization goals.
3. Review and assess your site for the presence of relevant content and appropriate links
We make a judgment about your site for usability and value to the target audience. If your site has usability problems or a lack of content, especially content related to your keyword phrases, we help you fix that before proceeding. In this phase we pay a lot of attention to page titles, link titles, heading titles and subheads, image alternate tags and so forth.
4. Review and assess your site for usability
Usable web sites have a logical organization and links that correspond with site titles. If this is not the case, we correct such problems before proceeding.
5. Place image labels (alternate text)
Keywords will be added to your home page images as alternative text. This is important because search engines index these words as well.
6. Add Meta-tags
Meta-tags are descriptive information conceived to help search engines catalog a web site. We spend no significant time on Keyword Meta-tags or HTML comments because these are ignored by the dominate search engines.
Since the Description Meta-tag may be used by search engines to inform the search engine results text, we add a unique description meta-tag to each page.
7. Announce your home page with the three major search engines
The purpose of this step is to notify the search engines that you've had an important update on your site, rather than waiting for them to discover the update.
Pricing
- Phase 1: Site Assessment (Free)
- Phase 2: Keyword Discovery and Site Recommendations ($150)
- Phase 3: Implementation ($50/hour)
- Total: $250 - 1000
