Web Site Design Resource Center

Top 5: Why SEO Matters

Search Engine Optimization is the process by which a web site achieves higher rankings in search engine results. Among the most important search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Live. As the Internet became more mainstream, people began looking for ways to cost effectively advertise their business online. Search engines offered these people and organizations the opportunity they were looking for.

There are two primary types of search engine marketing: paid and organic. Paid involves bidding on keywords relevant to your organization. The higher you bid for a particular keyword, the higher your firm will show in the paid listings. Google, for example, lists the paid search engine advertisements on the right side of the search results page and is commonly referred to Google AdWords.

On the other side of the fence is organic search engine optimization. Many have come to realize that achieving better search engine results organically is more of an art than a science. In deciding how to rank web sites, Google has an algorithm that measures hundreds of different attributes pertaining to a specific web site, and this algorithm is constantly changing to ensure search engine effectiveness. Organic search results are those that you see when searching for anything in a search engine; they are the main listings. The best part of attaining higher organic results is that it costs nothing (directly, that is) to achieve better results. There may be indirect costs, however, in that organic search engine optimization requires time, patience, and perfection.

The focus of our following "Top 5" list are five things you should concentrate on in order to get better organic search engine results. There is no magic formula, merely a basis for a starting point to send you down the right path. As you move further along the path, you will find what works... and what does not.

Top 5 Things You Should Do To Begin Optimizing Your Web Site

5. Avoid "Black Hat" SEO Tactics

Black Hat SEO is a way of cutting corners in optimizing a site. Popular forms of these tactics include keyword stuffing and hidden links. Under these two examples, an individual will attempt to optimize their web site by stuffing as many keywords onto a page as possible. To render this invisible to users, the individual may try to hide the keywords by making it the same color as the background.

Fortunately, search engines are pretty well able to determine when someone is employing Black Hat tactics to achieve better rankings. The result can be highly detrimental, too. Oftentimes, sites discovered to be using Black Hat methods will be lowered in rankings if not completely removed from the search engine. Getting relisted to a search engine is a long process that site owners should do everything possible to avoid.

If in optimizing your web site you think what you are doing may be interpreted as Black Hat or spamming, do not do it. Go with your gut instinct. If it seems wrong, it probably is. If you think it is going to get you fast and easy results, it probably will not.

4. Structure Your Web Site Properly

When a search engine reads your web site, it is looking at the HTML and other code elements of your site. And just like a person, a search engine needs to be able to read this part of your site efficiently. There are several items of importance that you should focus on, which we have highlighted below.

Use CSS: Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, has become a powerful force in the coding of web sites. It allows for the control of a site's entire styling structure in one place. It also removes a lot of tedious code from web pages to make them clean and more easy to read by search engines.
Tagging: Tagging your images and other visual elements of your web site is a must. Search engines cannot interpret what an image means. Therefore, the ALT tag enables you to tell search engines what the image is.
Page Titles: Page titles are extremely important. This is what the search engine uses to list your web site in the results. Many organizations will commonly place their name in the front of every page title. We recommend against this. Instead, you should carefully place important keywords and phrases first.
Meta Tags: Meta tags have lost some effectiveness over the years; however, search engines still look toward these tags to fill in the site description in search engine results. Moreover, it does not hurt to place keywords in your meta tags (try no to over do it).
Web Site URLs: When creating directories and pages under your site, try choosing creative names. For example, if you sell auto insurance to people in Fairfax, instead of choosing www.smithagency.com/services, go with something like www.smithagency.com/fairfax-auto-insurance. This gives your web site a little bit more relevancy when people search for those particular keywords.
Create a Sitemap: A sitemap is a page on your web site that outlines all the sections that create your site. Sitemaps should be intuitive and guide users to all the major areas of your web site. For SEO, search engines will find your sitemap and use it to map out the rest of your site to increase the chances of all your pages getting indexed.

3. Identify Good Keywords

Good keywords are the hallmark of effective search engine optimization. This involves much research into what your prospects are searching for to find firms like yours. And once you have an inkling of what these search terms are, you need to drill down into them and find a good niche to focus your energy on. If you think too broadly, you will never achieve the results you want because everyone else is vying for the same positions. However, if you focus in on more specific terms people are searching for, you have a better chance of ranking higher as there is less competition for those keywords.

A couple ways of drilling down into your keywords include focusing geographically and identifying product/service specific keywords. Geographically speaking, find keywords that relate to the areas you serve such as counties, cities, and perhaps states. Product/service specific keywords should delve into key attributes of the things your sell. Instead of saying you sell "phone installation services," try saying "authorized Toshiba Strata installation services."

2. Get Linked

Links are essential for three primary reasons. First, your web site must be linked to in order for search engines to find it. The way search engines work is that they send out robots, crawlers, or spiders to scour web pages and index them. They make use of links to jump internally throughout a web site and then externally to other sites that are being linked to. If no one is linking to you, a search engine bot will never be able to find you.

Second, outbound links from your web site are important in establishing relevancy and reciprocity. Search engines like finding links on web sites that link to outside sites that contain content relevant to your content.

Third, and most important, is establishing links to your web site. This is different from the first point because you must now find sites of authority to link to you. A web site achieves high authority over time as it becomes more popular. By having a site with authority link to you, it is telling search engines that your site must have something of value or else it would not receive the attention of a high authority site.

1. Always Be Updating

Where salespeople are told to "Always Be Closing," search engine optimizers should "Always Be Updating." This is number one on our list because the benefits of keeping your web site up-to-date is two-fold. First, search engines place a strong emphasis on sites that are alive and continuously being updated with good, relevant content. Search engines provide a service of helping people find what they are looking for. It only makes sense that search engines would try to find the most relevant and up-to-date content to please their users. In developing your content, not only should you keep it fresh, you should also create a strategy by which you place your keywords and links throughout the content. Search engines will see those keywords, phrases, and links and use that to weigh the importance and relevancy of your content.

The second part of this is the most essential part of maintaining an effective web site. In keeping your web site fresh, the focus should be on the human user of your site. When a person comes across your web site and sees that it is updated and contains strong content, they will begin to trust your web site as an authority figure in the industry. Therefore, in optimizing your web site for search engines, do not focus too heavily on making your site readable to search engines. Instead, concentrate on the user while following the SEO best practices outlined above, and your web site will naturally excel in the search engines.