What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is the science of producing web pages that are attractive to the search engines.

The better optimized the page is, the higher a ranking it will achieve in major search engine results. This is especially critical because most people who use search engines, such as Google or Yahoo, only look at the first page of the search results. For a page to get high traffic from a search engine, it has to be listed in that first page.

Search engine optimization focuses on techniques such as making sure that each web page has appropriate title tags and meta tags, and that the keyword or key phrases for the page are distributed throughout the content in a way that the particular search engine will like.

Search engines find and catalog web pages through spidering software. Unfortunately, not all search engine spidering software works the same way, so what gives a page a high ranking on one search engine may not give it a high ranking on another.

One of the things that search engine optimization specialists do is keep track of all the changes in search engine operations so they can optimize pages accordingly. They also keep up with changes in the different search engine submission policies.

When you choose a designer to create a business web site, you should ask him or her about search engine optimization, as search engine optimization should be built into your pages. While it's never too late to optimize or tweak pages that have already been published, it's a lot easier and more sensible to include search engine optimization when the page is first written.

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Who Needs SEO?

Any website that is geared towards business or commerce should posses search engine optimization elements. The ultimate goal of a website is to attract internet users, and studies have shown that the vast majority of users find websites by using the major search engines.

If your company is considering building a new website or updating an existing one, then search engine optimization should be one of the top priorities in mind. We tell our customers this:

"If you spend a significant amount of money to develop the "Look and Feel" of your website but users can find you, then all of your development money has gone to waste."

Keep in mind that SEO can be geared for large competitive industries as well as small "niche" markets. Also, SEO campaigns have a much higher return on investment than other traditional internet marketing techniques.

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Why is SEO important?

What is SEO? It is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. What exactly does SEO do? It is the method of analyzing and constructing individual web pages, as well as entire sites, so that they can be discovered, analyzed, and then indexed by various search engines.

SEO can make the content of your web pages more relevant, more attractive, and more easily read by search engines and their crawling and indexing software. Why would this be of great importance to you? Would it be important to you if customers were unable to find your telephone number or find the address of your business? I do not think that many businesses could survive for very long in this situation.

This situation could apply to a web site. Can potential customers locate your current web site easily? Traffic to your web site could be extremely low. Potential customers might not even know that your site exists.

"Wait a minute!" you say. "We have a beautiful web site, and we include the web site address in all advertising campaigns. Why would people be unable to find our site?" Of course, your current customers and persons already acquainted with your business would be likely to find your web site without difficulty. Wouldn't they? Are you absolutely sure that your advertising has reached enough potential customers? Did you consider that some people simply do not read the newspapers? How about people who didn't get the issue of the magazine where you placed an expensive ad?

Did these people hear the WABC radio broadcast when your commercial aired? Were they watching channel 44 during the news hour? Were they on the direct mail list for which you paid thousands of dollars?

So how about those search engines that everyone uses? Potential customers will type a word or two into the box, hit 'Enter', and immediately find a listing for your company's web site. One more click and you have another visitor. Search engines sure are great, aren't they? Yes, they certainly are great, and the 'type-and-click' scenario above does happen. More often than not, however, it doesn't happen without a little work. Search Engine Optimization is that work.

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When will I see SEO results?

You will see some tangible results within days, but typically it takes between 1 to 3 months to see a positive return on investment. For example, your homepage might be indexed by Google and/or Yahoo within days. However, it typically takes 4 to 8 weeks to have your interior pages indexed.

Achieving a favorable ranking in the major search engines is a gradual process. We must consider several factors when determining the timetable for achieving a favorable rank.

What keywords or key phrases will be targeted?

How competitive are those keywords and key phrases?

These factors, along with others, determine the size and scope of a search engine optimization campaign.