What's the difference between search engine optimization and paid search engine marketing?
Search engine optimization, or SEO, relates to the submission of your website to the major search engines and the various techniques that can be used to achieve the highest organic ranking possible. SEO is a longer term marketing process that relies on understanding the way the various search engines rank websites. The overriding objective of SEO is to get your website ranked as highly as possible in the free, organic search results. Paid search engine marketing is often referred to as "Pay Per Click" marketing or "PPC". PPC utilizes relevant keywords, target demographics, ad-writing skills, and landing page optimization to attract potential customers to your website. You pay the search engine only when the customer you are seeking to attract searches one of the keyword combinations you've bid on and then actually clicks on your ad. PPC campaigns can measure ROI all the way through to the conversion of leads that are generated.
What's your approach to SEO?
Broadly, we approach each SEO project from two angles. First, we remove any barrier to the search engines' analysis of your primary search keywords. This is called on-page optimization. We may need to remedy bad internal linking structure, remove content from flash or images, amend or add meta-tags, or improve URL structure, among other factors. While these barriers are being removed, we'll also work to increase your site's relevance in the eyes of the search engines. We call this off-page optimization. We may need to add content to your site, as well as promote high quality in-bound links. We might recommend starting a blog, or regularly distributing a newsletter and press releases. Our tactics will depend on the needs of your specific SEO project, your budget and your goals.
What's on-page optimization?
On-page optimization is the optimization of your website pages for search. Search engines are designed to provide their users with the most relevant sites for any particular search query. If your website is relevant to a search but has not been designed or written in a way that is search engine friendly, nobody is likely to find you.
What's off-page optimization?
Boosting the link popularity of a particular web page or website is also known off-page optimization. Even if the content of your website has been properly optimized for search, you may still be buried in the rankings. Google gives significant weight to the link popularity of websites in its ranking formula. If your website does not have a sufficient number of quality inbound links from other websites, it may not receive a high ranking in competitive search categories.
Who are the major search engines?
Google holds the top spot by a considerable margin. They have reached over one trillion web pages within their index and are continuing to grow by several billion new web pages per day. Google responds to over 40 billion searches per month. Thus, our primary focus will be to generate a high ranking on Google. Yahoo! and MSN are, respectively, the second and third largest search engine portals.
How long does it typically take to get results?
Normally, a search engine optimization and submission efforts requires at least six months to show real results. If you are in a particularly competitive field, it may take even longer. During this period, we will provide you with progress reports and answers to any questions that you might have. Frankly, anyone who says that they can produce results for you immediately is not reputable.
How do the search engines rank sites?
Search engines are designed to list results starting with the most authoritative, relevant websites for a particular search. The formulas they use to make this determination are very complex, taking into account hundreds of variables. Consequently, search engine optimization is a complex undertaking that requires a diverse set of skills and a thorough understanding of the main factors involved.
Do search engines use the same ranking criteria?
In general, yes. However, there are some differences that might affect ranking or how quickly your ranking improves. A well designed and executed SEO campaign should produce positive results across all search engines.
What tactics cause a site to get penalized by a search engine?
In general, tactics that have been developed for the sole purpose of artificially coaxing higher rankings. Over the years, these techniques have included text masking, cloaking pages, stuffing meta-tags and creating link farms to artificially increase a site's inbound links. Even when these tactics enjoy a brief period of success, they never last since they conflict with the overriding objective of any search engine - to consistently produce relevant search results. We will not recommend or employ any of these or similar tactics. You should avoid any SEO firm that does.
Can you guarantee a specific ranking objective?
It's unrealistic to promise a ranking result. You should be wary of any company who will make such a guarantee. That said, we will do everything in our power to produce the results we've discussed within the budget agreed upon.
Will you just tell me what changes to make or will you make them for me?
We'll work with you either way. We'll ordinarily want to do the work ourselves. However if you'd prefer, for budgetary or other reasons, that we work with your webmaster or web designer, we'll be happy to do so.
Do you outsource any work?
Yes. The objective of any SEO project is to produce the best possible result. If we require specific capabilities that we don't have, such as an industry-specific expert copywriter, we won't hesitate to use them. If you've hired a SEO consultant who doesn't take advantage of expertise that they don't have, prepare yourself for a mediocre result.
Why are quality links to my website so important?
Think about it from the prospective of the major search engines. When you use their service, it's critical to their business model that the search results in the top positions are not only relevant to the search but also the best or most authoritative websites. If they aren't, people will switch to another search engine. One way to ensure this is to rank websites by how many other quality websites refer and link to it for some reason.
What are the best ways to build links to our website?
We're not big fans of link exchanges, especially if they are created by automated programs that build useless pages of links designed only for a search engine. We do recommend a number of methods for building natural, one-way links. We'll be happy to work with you to pursue any of these methods. They include creating relevant and unique content that will encourage others to link to you without you having to ask, submitting to relevant, niche directories that use real human editors and are known to generate valid back links within the major search engines, finding out who is linking to your competitors and asking them to link to you as well, contacting relevant websites and blogs who may be willing to review and link to your website, and writing and syndicating press releases and helpful articles that include a link back to your website.
How long will it take for my website to be indexed?
It depends on the search engine and whether you are willing to pay for inclusion. Google now crawls the web and updates its index continually. On the other side of the spectrum, it may take a couple of months or more to see your site added to the smaller search engine indexes. For the directories, it can take several weeks or months to get added. This is especially true for Open Directory Project because the editors are volunteers.
Will switching server hosts affect my search engine rankings?
It shouldn't affect your rankings. However, it wouldn't hurt to leave your website up on the old host for a while to ensure that the search spiders have indexed your pages at the new host. Once you see the spiders in your log files at the new host, it should be safe to take down the website at the old server.
Can I find out how much traffic my competitor's site receives?
We can't find out exactly how much traffic your competitors get unless they make their log file statistics public. Sites such as Alexa.com can give you some comparative data, but they will never give you the exact amount of traffic that your competitors receive. The only sites you can get that information from are those to which you have log file access, or those on which you have installed some tracking code. That said, there are some tools that can provide you with some competitive analysis, such as Comscore and Hitwise.
