What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO), defined by Wikipedia, “is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via ‘natural’ (‘organic’ or ‘algorithmic’) search results for targeted keywords”. We feel it is so much more. True SEO employs several key elements to build traffic to websites and ultimately increase business by bringing customers – prospects that convert to leads and then to sales – to you (see our Services page for more information on our current offering). This section is included to educate you on Search Engine Optimization and why it is so important to every business with a website. Search Engine Optimization comes in two flavors: Organic SEO and Pay Per Click.

Pay Per Click

Pay per click (PPC) requires the website owner to pay a fee for specific search terms so that when that term or phrase is searched, the website is given a priority position in the sponsored section of the search results. With PPC, each time someone clicks on your link, you pay a fee. While PPC gives instant gratification and you can see results quickly by paying for clicks, the downside is that you have to pay to receive this positioning.

The amount you pay, depending on the price (popularity) of a search phrase and the number of clicks on your link, could be significant. Another thing to consider if you’re thinking about going the pay per click route is that, on average, 40% of PPC clicks are “fraudulent” – clicks by competitors, for example, or machine clicking by wed spiders surfing the web for different purposes other than those that are of benefit to you and your business.

Organic SEO

Organic search engine optimization, also known as natural search engine optimization, is an ongoing process that enables a website to obtain free listings on the major search engines without incurring ongoing costs. This is accomplished through a process that involves keyword analysis, link building and optimizing page code and content. See our Services page for a full list of service offerings.

Organic searches are desirable for several reasons, not the least of which is that they’re free. Additionally, 75% of search result clicks are organic as opposed to the 25% of clicks for pay-per-click (PPC) results. And, research has shown that organic search users are more highly educated than those who click on PPC results. However, there is a downside: results take time to build and improve your ranking. Usually results can be seen in as quickly as six weeks to up to six months depending on the business; PPC results can usually be seen within hours of implementing a program.

There are two basic elements to Organic SEO; On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to anything you do to a website to improve on the actual website pages including code, site map, content, etc.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to your link popularity and building the number of pages that link to your site.

Although there are pros and cons to each, using a combination of Organic SEO and PPC will generally give you the best results.

Social Network Marketing

A fairly new tool in the SEO arsenal, Social Networking is the wave of the SEO future. Social Networking refers to other websites who link people together through a common interest or need. Networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace are just a few examples of social networks. In this arena, you can submit articles, blogs and press releases on your company's behalf to build internet recognition, credibility and more importantly, to increase your website ranking by having high-traffic websites linking to yours.

Google PageRank

Who better to explain Google PageRank than Google themselves?

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.’ Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.

Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.” (Reference: http://www.google.com/technology/index.html)

PageRank, an analysis tool named after its developer Steve Page, plays a big part in building the link popularity of your website. The more relevant pages you have linking to your site, the higher your link popularity will be and the higher your search results will be.

Content is King

Content is king (or queen) to the major search engines. Content rich with keywords, that is. If you tell the search engines, for example, you want your site to be indexed for a certain keyword/phrase, that keyword needs to appear in your website’s text and in its metatags (essentially the code behind the web page). And it needs to appear frequently enough to convince the search engines that your site is relevant to the searcher’s request. Be careful though, you don't want to over use keywords or phases as this will only hurt your rankings. You want your site to be readable by a customer and not just written for spiders searching the web. The key factor here is to balance the two.

Let’s look at an example. Say you want your site to appear in the search results for "day spas." When a searcher types "day spas" into Google or Yahoo's search box, the search engines first check their databases to see which sites claim to be about that topic. Yahoo! finds 5,870,000 entries related to the phrase "day spas." Why would your site show up on page 1 of the search results instead of page 8000? Because your site includes the relevant phrases to enable the search engines’ algorithms to assign it a higher ranking than 5,869,990 of the other listings. The ranking denotes the probability that a site contains the information relative to the searcher’s request and it drives the order in which sites show up in the major search engines.

SEO isn’t a simple thing. Sure, there are tools out there that can help you optimize your site…if you understand what you’re doing and have the time to do all that’s required to optimize your site…finding the best keywords, submitting your site to the search engines, tracking your efforts, knowing when to make changes…and so much more.

The Wideforce SEO Solution includes experienced, knowledgeable, search engine optimization specialists just waiting to work with you to ensure your site has the proper tags, content and design to help get your site noticed by the search engines so you can generate more traffic, more leads and, ultimately, more sales!

Check out our Services page to find out what we can do to help you!