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Components of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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- Key word research and recommendations
It
is hard for some clients to understand why they might want to optimize
for one keyword vs. another, but if we really analyze keyword search
traffic, the competitive market, and the overall marketing opportunity,
and then focus on a broad market plan, there is good justification for
doing appropriate study around keyword development.
- Review the website code to gauge SEO 'friendliness'
We
ask the technical questions around how easy it is for search engine
spiders to find a website, search through it's pages for important
information, and then cache [and index] everything relevant. Some of
the things we look for: friendly URL's, Keyword density, clean HTML,
internal linking structure, meta data intact and formatted correctly,
sitemap usage, page title descriptions.
- Competitive Analysis
There
is no amount of competitive research that is really "enough" ... if you
want to win over everyone else, you have to know them and execute on
what they do, but better. We ask questions around what
traffic/audiences the competitors are going after, who are they
advertising with, who is willing to partner with and potentially give
them inbound links (and why, and how!).
- Content Creation and/or Suggestions
This is a broad subject, and it takes alot of time and effort to come
up with good suggestions around valid content. There seems to be a
fine line between providing good, solid, provocative content vs. being
verbose, prolific, and boring. Just knowing the difference is a start,
and while we maintain that more is better, it is important to use good
taste, and judicious use of the web-page's real estate..
- Website design and User-Friendliness
A
website owner never wants just traffic ... they want buyers!
Conversions! Customers, for sure. Attractive website design is
important because it might entice visitors to further surf and
investigate the site...the more visitors that look at the site's
internal pages, the better the site might rank on the search engines.
- Link Acquisitions
While all SEO specialists
know that more (and better/more relevant) inbound links is inherently good, too many that come too fast has the potential to cause problems from some of the search engines.
How many is too many? We suggest that the better, legitimate links are the ones to
shoot for. Link building takes time, strategy, and persistence.
- Listen to Search Engine Guidelines
One
of the most important things we do is make sure to adhere to solid
practices around website development. Google, Yahoo, and MSN actually
prescribe how to optimize a website, so we pay strict attention to
their suggestions and guidelines. There are innumerable suggestions by
SEO specialists on blogs, in books and journals, on Search
Engine-specific websites, in media articles, and many other places that
only confuse the issues. Rarely do we find anything of real use, and
continue to go back to the search engines themselves for our own best
practices. We advocate the following, and it drives our methodology
behind the work we do to gain search engine strength: Be real. Be relevant. Be
honest. Write original copy. Know what not to do at least as much as what to do.
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