Your #1 Choice To Help Capture More Business Online
Your #1 Choice To Help Capture More Business Online
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Why does my company/organization/website need SEO?
 
The majority of Web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines—Yahoo!, Bing, Google, Ask,
The point is this: If your site cannot be found by search engines, or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search—in other words, people who want what you have visiting your site as a result of searching for what they want, rather than knowing your actual site name. Whether your site provides content, services, products or information, search engines are a primary method of navigation for almost all Internet users.
Search queries—the words that users type into the search box, which contain terms and phrases best suited to your site—carry extraordinary value. Experience has shown that search engine traffic can make—or break—an organization’s success. Targeted visitors to a website can provide publicity, revenue and exposure like no other. Investing in SEO, whether through time or finances, can have an exceptional rate of return.

Why can’t the search engines figure out my site without SEO help? 

Search engines are always working toward improving their technology to “crawl’ the Web more deeply, and return increasingly relevant results to users. However, there is, and always will be, a limit to how search engines can operate. Whereas the right moves can net you thousands of visitors and attention, the wrong moves can hide or bury your site deep in the search results where visibility is minimal. In addition to making content available to search engines, SEO can also help boost rankings, so that content that has been found will be placed where searchers will more readily see it. The online environment is becoming increasingly competitive, and those companies who perform SEO will have a decided advantage in visitors and customers.

How Search Engines Operate

Search engines have a short list of critical operations that allows them to provide relevant Web results when searchers use their system to find information.

  • Crawling the Web
Search engines run automated programs, called “bots” or “spiders,” which use the hyperlink structure of the Web to “crawl” the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web. Estimates are that, of the approximately 20 billion existing pages, search engines have crawled between 8 and 10 billion.
  • Indexing documents 
once a page has been crawled, its contents can be “indexed”—stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine’s index, which needs to be tightly managed, so that the requests that must search and sort billions of documents can be completed in fractions of a second.
  • Processing queries 
when a request for information comes into the search engine (hundreds of millions do each day), the engine retrieves from its index all the document that match the query. A match is determined if the terms or phrase is found on the page in the manner specified by the user. For example, a search for car and driver magazine at Google returns 8.25 million results, but a search for the same phrase in quotes (“car and driver magazine“) returns only 166 thousand results. In the first system, commonly called “Findall” mode, Google returned all documents which had the terms “car” “driver” and “magazine” (they ignore the term “and” because it’s not useful to narrowing the results); while in the second search, only those pages with the exact phrase “car and driver magazine” were returned. Other advanced operators (Google has a list of 11) can change which results a search engine will consider a match for a given query.
  • Ranking results
 once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine’s algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. They sort these on the results pages in order, from most to least relevant, so that users can make a choice about which to select.
Canonical Issues & Duplicate Content

One of the most common and problematic issues for website builders, particularly those with larger, dynamic sites powered by databases, is the issue of duplicate content. Search engines are primarily interested in unique documents and text, and when they find multiple instances of the same content, they are likely to select a single one as “canonical” and display that page in their results.
If your site has multiple pages with the same content, either through a content management system (CMS) that creates duplicates through separate navigation, or because copies exist from multiple versions, you may be hurting those pages’ chances of ranking in the SERPs. In addition, the value that comes from anchor text and link weight, through both internal and external links to the page, will be diluted by multiple versions.

Press Releases and Public Relations


Influencing mainstream or niche press outlets to cover your company or its actions can be a highly effective way to drive attention to your site, which, if link worthy, can earn a fantastic number of links in short order. Press release sites like PRNewsWire and PRWeb are good starting places for driving traffic and links, and as both feed the major online news search engines (Yahoo! & Google News) they can provide high visibility as well. Optimizing press releases is a unique practice in and of itself—placement of text in the title and in visible headlines, compelling story writing and proper content structure are all important elements.

Link Building Based on Competitive Analysis

Looking at the links obtained by your top competitors and pursuing methods of your own to get listed on those sites/pages is an excellent way to stay competitive in the link building race. It’s also a good way to get natural traffic, as these are the links and sites that send your competitors their traffic, they will also bring visitors to your site. The methodology for investigating a competitor’s links is fairly straightforward, although the advanced researcher can use more complex methods

Highly Competitive Terms & Phrases 


For some terms and phrases, even the best websites with the most diligent promotional efforts will have a very difficult time penetrating the top 10-20 results. In these instances, it can be tempting to rely on efforts outside of the search engines’ guidelines. However strong this temptation may be, be advised that search engines do not tolerate spam or manipulation via automated links, nor do they allow such results to flourish for long. Although these methods, commonly referred to as “black hat SEO,” may have some effectiveness in the short-term, they have little chance of long-term success in the SERPs and may become permanently banned from search results.
For highly competitive results (from “mortgage” to “car insurance” to “university degree”), targeting the above described “long tail” (the more niche related search terms for which a smaller degree of heavy competition exists) can be the best method. Search engines are also careful to consider the age of a site and its links, and give heavy weight to those sites with long-held, highly trusted links. Thus, while rankings may be sparse at first, over time, an enterprising site owner can achieve some measure of notice, even in the most competitive of searches.

Conclusion: Implementing an SEO Strategy

The process of SEO is not easy to tackle, largely because so many pieces of a site factor into the final results. Promoting a site that writers on the Web are unlikely to link to is as deadly as creating a fantastic website no one will see. SEO is also a long-term process, both in application and results—those who expect quick rankings after completing a few suggestions in this guide will be deeply disappointed. Search engines can often be frustratingly slow to respond to improvements that will eventually garner significant boosts in traffic. Patience is not the only virtue that should be used for successful SEO. The strategy itself must have a strong foundation in order to succeed.

Working with a Pro vs. Do-It-Yourself

SEO 
As in many other areas of Web development, a long-standing argument exists between those who feel that learning and practicing SEO should be done in-house, vs. those who feel it is best left to the professionals. There are advantages to either side, and it’s best to weigh these against each other when making a final decision. 

Advantages of Working with a Professional SEO
  • Diverse Experience – Professionals with several years of SEO experience under their belts can tell you what to expect from the search engines as you conduct the optimization process. They can also interpret and understand rankings data and “hiccups” in the results that may indicate certain trends or strategies that should be implemented or avoided.
  • Link-Building Knowledge – Professionals will have the ability to quickly identify topical communities and the most popular and relevant sites in them, saving time when link building. SEO’s also have considerable experience with link acquisition, and will recognize the requirements of certain sites for paid links, link requests, etc.
  • Identifying Linkable Content – SEO’s are often masters of crafting and launching content. Not only can they identify the content most likely to get links from the specific Web community, they’re also experienced in how to package and promote it.
  • Fixing Possible Problems – Professionals are competent at identifying and managing issues that can cause a lack of indexing, low rankings or penalties from the search engines. This is a skill that can be very hard to develop without years of practice and experience. If you have a ranking issue, an SEO can be of great value.
  • Time Savings – SEO can be an exceptionally time-consuming endeavor. An experienced SEO has the processes and systems of optimization down to a science, and can use that efficiency to provide better service in less time.
Advantages of Do-It-Yourself SEO
  • Complete Control – With personal responsibility comes complete control for each element of your site’s progress. There can be no question as to who or what created a link or modified a document.
  • Learn from Your Actions – The ebb and flow of the SERP’s will quickly teach an amateur SEO what works and what doesn’t. Certain links, timing and on-page changes will be fully visible and recordable, making it a learning process.
  • Personal Responsibility – Your success or failure will depend entirely on your own efforts, narrowing responsibility and preventing overlaps in work or issues of blame.
Cost Savings
  • Doing SEO yourself means you don’t have to pay someone else. If you find that your time is less expensive than hiring an outsourced provider, do-it-yourself SEO can be a great way to save money.
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