Search Engine Optimization
Google, Yahoo and Bing are the big three search engines that everyone wants to be featured in. That's a lot of competition. The good news is that not everyone is willing to take the steps you must take to get a high ranking in the search engines. What are those steps? According to O'Reilly's publication, "SEO WARRIOR" by John Jercovic, SEO is defined as
"all the work necessary to produce a high volume of referral hits from search engines, web directories and other websites with the ultimate goal of making the website popular"
The search engines respond best to an ongoing process of building links and establishing presence. This is why SEO must be maintained over time to be effective.
The 6 Essential Components of SEO
Research
A writer once commented that every good story has already been written - what remains is for the good writer to borrow judiciously
Finding Keywords
Every website has keywords, which you compete with others on, they describe the nature of your business or website content. The point is to use the keywords naturally in your websites copy, along with discovering unique keywords that will drive interested visitors directly to your site.
We have the tools and programs to do an in depth analysis of the top sites featured by the search engine for the keywords that we determine are optimum for your goals. This program will grab the information from the top competitive sites for your keyword choices and complile it into an easy to understand report, which spell out the necessary steps to take to mimic the results these websites have acheived.
An advanced keyword strategy is called "long-tail" keyword selection. This refers to finding niche keywords for your website which naturally have less competition and more potential for directing traffic to the site. Long-tail searches often exhibit a higher conversion rate by up to 200% compared to short-tail (generic) keywords
Planning and Strategy
Planning
With the research data in hand, planning your campaign is next. Planning includes:
- Setting goals
- Determine key players (who will do what?)
- Assign a budget
Strategy
The following steps are important in optimizing your web presense, there are two areas for action, on-site (your website) and off-site (the web):
- Create relevent, keyword-rich content for your website, including links, tags, meta descriptions and optimized code
- Obtain "back-links" from other sites on the web, links which link to your site. This is the ongoing process which makes up the heart of SEO. Links which come from established "authority" sites can provide valuable "link-juice" for your own page ranking. The whole process of researching and contacting various related and competing sites is a delicate art and very time-consuming. Linkbuilders learn to foster an interest in what they learn, so when it comes time to actually send those e-mails requesting links, there is a genuine knowledge and interest in the topic at hand, which is critical to receiving a positive reaction.This process also, by necessity includes the creation and distribution of "link-bait" (enticements for others to link to your site) Link bait commonly includes:
- Breaking News
- Unique or Valuable Information
- Contests
- Humor or Entertainment
- Free Widgets or Software
- List your website in important and relevant directories, if necessary, target local directories too.
- Create social media (facebook, myspace, linkedin, etc.) sites for extra "free" backlinks and more opportunities for social bookmarking
- Become an authority - submit information rich articles to the various article depositories
- Create Press Releases
- Useful Commenting in blogs and forums
- Create Complimentary Sites - these are hosted in unique IP's to establish an independent presence from original site, they link to the original site and thereby boost ranking
Implementation
Who will do What?
The on-going campaign to establish your web presence. There are many parts of this process that website owners undertake themselves, such as posting to their own blogs, facebook sites, commenting in other blogs and forums and in general participation.
Other website owners do not participate in this process, it is solely up to you to decide!
iwebresults will provide you with detailed instructions on how you can participate, if that is your choice.
Monitoring
Reports
This is the technical aspect of the process, special code is inserted into the webpages to allow for precise monitoring of each page, including where visitors came from, how long they stayed, which pages they visited, who is back-linking to the web-site, site rank, and much more. Top competitors' sites are also analyzed to detrmine their strategies for reaching top ranking and these are imitated.
Private Webpage
This information is generated in easy to read reports which we post to your private webpage, accessed through the login link on the iwebresults webpages. In this private area, we also post commuication to you regarding the ongoing campaign and links for you to follow to review the link building process.
Assessment
Communication
Once concrete data has been obtained during the monitoring process, it is possible to get a grasp on the progress that has been made and make decisions to stick with the current campaign strategy or make changes. The private webpage area will contain communication to you on our assessment and comments on the results.
Maintenance
Keep the Flame Alive
Once a successful strategy has been designed and implemented, it must be maintained.
this process can be as simple as making weekly entries in your blog or as complex as your strategy dictates. It all depends on the results that you are seeking, and we are here to help you obtain those results!