SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
If anyone tells you that they can guarantee you top placement in all search engines, look elsewhere fast. None of the SEO service firms own Google, Yahoo, MSN or other search engines and not one legitimate SEO company or firm can guarantee you top listing.
What can cause your web site to be unfriendly to the search engine spiders:
- Poor to very badly written HTML code
- Excessive use of tables to format pages
- No text on your page (it is just graphics or Flash)
- Not enough text on each of the pages for your web site
- No META tags or the META tags are for another company (believe it or not but I have seen this happen). Google doesn’t look at META keyword tags, but some of the other search engines do.
If SEO and keyword phrases in your copy (the written part of your web site) is extremely important to your business and are willing to pay for it (it is not inexpensive) then I can rewrite your content to make it more search engine friendly, but will NOT guarantee that your site will get ahead of your competitor.
Search engine optimization is not a one time thing it is an ongoing process. The search engines are always changing the algorithms they use. They want to see new content and using a blog is a simple way to do this.
Organic Method
Your home page needs to be rich in keywords or keyword phrases, but at the same time if you should not try to fool the search engine spiders by including keywords as they would appear in a META keyword tag at the bottom of each page. The term used for this is Keyword Stuffing and is considered somewhat unethical, and can get you dropped by the search engines.
What I will do for you
Look over your web site completely paying attention to the copy, the standard tags that should be implemented, and the code/design of your web site. Once a contract is signed and a deposit received I research the 3 keyword phrases to use for your web site, investigate appropriate places to have your web site listed (directories, organizations, etc.) and start working on redoing your web site based upon the course of action we have determined is required.
GoogleTM has an excellent overview of Search Engine Optimizers.
I highly discourage having just a Flash intro as the home page. The spiders will most likely not index it, and customers will be not able to find you by searching. The spiders of some search engines cannot read the text or information displayed in Flash. There is nothing wrong with having a small Flash file on the home page, but there should be keyword or keyword phrase rich information in the copy.
Non-Organic Method
An non-organic way, instead if waiting for and hoping the search engines will quickly display your site, is to use PPC (pay-per-click). Google, Overture and other search engines offer these services for a fee. I would recommend this for brand new web sites to get visibility quickly, but you need to set a realistic budget for it. Once you have good rankings then I recommend discontinuing PPC.
Page Rank
There is a good article explaining how Google ranks a site here.
It is important to remember not to join link farms, and to be careful about who you want to provide a reciprocal link to you, and vice versa. If the links are completely unrelated to your business or location they are literally useless, and may do you more harm than good.
If you have any questions, please contact me.
