Search Engine Optimization
The SEO Process
The first step in SEO is researching the keywords. Keywords are generally the goods and services being searched for. People search for solutions, not a company or a person. For example if some one is looking for help with their business, they will generally search for “business consulting” much more often than “business consultant.”
In choosing the right keywords, look for:
- Phrases rather than individual words. Phrases are more specific and give closer results.
- Words that accurately describe the products or services that you offer.
- Phrases with a lower amount of competition. This means fewer websites using the same phrases.
- Select keyword phrases that have high traffic.
The best phrases meet all 4 tests. We suggest using a quality analysis tool such as Wordtracker.
Once the best keyword phrases have been chosen, they must be worked into the website. Use these keywords and phrases with the right prominence and frequency throughout the body text. For best results, you can use these keywords in the domain name, page names, in meta tags, hyperlinks and alt tags with the right prominence and frequency.
Before building up the pages with these keyword phrases, you need to fix any structural problems that exist with your site. Several common problems include websites constructed in frames, sites built with an online website builder and ones built with large slow loading graphics. Debug the HTML code to remove invalid code. We recommend checking your page(s) using http://validator.w3.org.
It is very important to get other websites to link to yours. Getting other websites to link to your site has been one of the key elements of SEO for many years. It is like a popularity contest. If your website has many other websites linking to it, then your website must be important. If these links are from major websites, then your website must be very important.
Now you are ready to let the search engines know your site exists. Today, a single submission to the major search engines is usually enough. We still recommend a manual submission to the open directory at dmoz.org.
Now is the hardest part... you wait. How do you know if what you did is working? You monitor the traffic and search engine spiders on your website statistics package that comes with the better hosting companies – like ours. You should monitor your actual rankings on at least a quarterly basis with all the various engines.
Or you can sit back and let Doug Williams and Associates do the work and get you the results that you need.