Do you want to increase traffic to your website and generate more leads?
Search Engine Optimization is a process of improving the presence of your site, and gets you ranking in search results on the internet, along with increasing traffic volume to a website. The higher your website ranks on a search engine, the more people searching will visit your site.
Why you need search engine optimization:
1) People today search the internet first when looking for services. If your business can not be found in your local area by people searching for your products or services, then you are losing potential customers and business opportunities.
2) SEO is cost effective marketing. It’s typically less expensive than print, radio, and television advertising.
3) A website using our basic SEO techniques will perform better in search engine rankings, and will get more traffic.
The goal of optimizing is to make your site more visible to the search engines and climb the rankings, putting your business on the first page, and ideally at the top of the first page. Our focus is on the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Bing) that has a combined market share of over 90%. Google dominates in being used for over 70% of internet searches.
SEO is a process, not a one time event. You will have a lot of competition for page 1 rankings, so you have to apply consistent actions and improvements to your website over time to create results.
What you need to know about search engine optimization:
“What You Don’t Know About SEO”
“It’s essential to understand SEO before you spend thousands hiring consultants you may not even need. …. countless SEO strategists, consultants and self-professed experts who will claim they can beam your site up into Google’s top 10 search results–for a price, of course. Consultants commonly charge upward of $200 an hour, and most will pressure you to sign a contract that keeps them on retainer for months–at prices as steep as $12,000 a month. Unscrupulous SEO firms not only make promises they can’t keep, the worst of them also use shady practices that might produce no traffic, deliver the wrong traffic or even get you banned from planet Google.” –Entrepreneur magazine (Feb. 2010)
“The SEO business is 80 percent scam,” says Peter Kent, an internet marketing strategist and author. “It’s very, very difficult to find a good firm.”
So the bottom line is you should know exactly what SEO services you are paying for, before you hire an SEO expert. Make sure they give you a detailed list of services they will perform, along with monthly reports on activities performed on your site. You should begin to see results within 3-6 months. If your website is new to the internet, results can take between 6-12 months if your SEO strategy is performed appropriately and consistently.
Basic SEO services should include:
- Keyword research and analysis: Finding the keywords with the highest possible number of searches on Google. Review your site, and your competitor’s sites to discover strengths and weaknesses. With this information, create a site optimization and link popularity building plan. You should not necessarily try to rank for the highest volume keywords because those are more competitive. Rather, find a niche and “long-tail” keywords that you can rank for faster to begin building rank and traffic to your site.
- On-page optimization: SEO-friendly URL’s, unique page titles, internal links on keywords, simple navigation and site structure.
- Content development: BLOGGING and page creation, that includes strong keyword page titles, a short page introduction using keywords, keyword-rich page content.
- Local Business Directory Listings, including Google Maps and others.
- Search engine submission: Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Bing, Alexa.
- Detailed reports on website traffic and visitors (Google Analytics).
- Link popularity building.
