Search Engine Optimization
SEO can help customers find your products and services online
Search Engine Optimization is a must to effectively do business online. If people cannot find your company online amidst all your competitors, it does not matter how nice your website looks or how good your products or services are. The first step to doing business online is getting the right audience to see what you have to offer, then converting the same audience into customers.
There are some in the industry who give SEO a bad name. The fact is, there are no tricks to SEO. SEO is simply about research, creativity, technical knowledge and ongoing monitoring of campaign progress. It takes knowing which tools to use and which keyword phrases make sense for your business and your customers, and then understanding how to cultivate language in a way both search engines and customers respond to.
Frequently Asked Questions
I'm hearing a lot about "rich snippets." What are they?
A rich snippet is fancy Google search result. It's enhanced with things like images and star ratings. You'll notice them a lot on recipes these days. To achieve rich snippets you need to implement markup around your structured data - people profiles, business address, ratings - using either microdata, microformats or RDFa.
What are some factors that influence PageRank?
There are numerous on-site and off-site factors that influence your performance in search engines. Among these are the number and quality of backlinks, title and heading tag optimization, relevance of overall on-page content, technical factors including the use of flash, Javascript and redirects, XML sitemaps, etc. In general, SEO is all about aligning your crosshairs. Your title and headings should relate to the content on page. Your anchor text should be relevant to the page you are linking to. If you provide relevant content and update your content regularly, avoid technical bottlenecks, and take advantage of new markup languages like microdata, you're halfway there.
How much does a typical search engine marketing campaign cost?
To deploy a successful search engine marketing campaign requires on-going engagement. Pricing keyword buys and determining which advertisements are the most effective based on your desired return on investment requires on-going analysis and adjustment. It is also important to note that successful SEM is best achieved when paired with SEO. Therefore, we would recommend that clients be prepared to spend at least $1000 a month for a successful SEM/SEO engagement.
How important is it to use social networking sites?
In a word, extremely. You may have noticed recent changes in Google search results. Search Plus Your World (SPY) is the root of that and a Google+ profile is now paramount for businesses. I know, I know, it's a ghost-town, but the fact remains that Google pulled the lever and you have to spring into action or lose out. It may not directly impact your organic search today, but it has implications in the long run.