The most popular question we get asked is "How Much Do You Ask For your Services?", a close second is the question "How do my customers find me in Google®?". To begin to answer that question properly let‘s look at some typical results from a Google® web search. In the following screenshot a prospective customer has just search for sarasota hotels:
Here is a brief explanation of each of the three sections of the results page:
- Sponsored Search Results - you pay Google (or Yahoo or Bing etc.) for placement within the top search results. Sponsored search results are primarily on the right-hand side of the page but can also be one to three results at the top of the page too for very popular keyword combinations (see section later on this page).
- Google Map Results - if the keyword combination used is relevant to a location e.g. sarasota hotels as above several most popular and most relevant results will be displayed from Google Maps with a mini map showing location for each listing. Businesses can register for free with Google Maps (essentially a local directory with advanced mapping built in) and are listed once registration is confirmed.
- Regular Search Results - regular search results are the most hotly sought after as they are the ones that potential customers tend to look at first and because they don‘t cost you anything if a customer clicks on your link to visit your website. Using complex and ever-changing formulas, Google determines how high your website will rank relevant to the keyword or keyword combination. Businesses pay big bucks to continually dominate hotly contended keyword combinations at a national level. Beware of SEO companies that guarantee a certain ranking.
It All Starts With Keywords
If your business is called Jones Lawn Maintenance, for example, you can expect, once established on the Google radar, to dominate that keyword combination almost by default. It is however normally the industry or service or product related keywords that deliver you the largest part of your return on investment, so that is where we concentrate our efforts.
As a business or organization there will be certain keywords or combination of keywords that you will want to target. Then there may also be certain geographic areas that are going to want to target to give you the best return on investment. As an initial exercise early on in the project we get our clients to come up with an initial draft list of 10 or 20 of the most important keywords that they believe are going to give them the best results. We then take this list together with their chosen target geographic area and do an analysis of the each keyword to see how they measure up in the real world.
In other words, how much traffic will a keyword combination actually generate when you look at the actual number of searches performed each month (from Google databases). We then re-work the initial list of keywords to come up with a list of best fit keyword combinations to try and maximize the client‘s return on investment. We then review the amended list with the client to make sure that they concur. The next step is to optimize the website that we design and build for these chosen keyword combinations.
Standard Search Engine Optimization Service
Our standard level of site optimization comes included with the cost of every custom website that we build and includes the following:
- Submission to all major search engines e.g. Google, Yahoo, AOL, Bing, Ask etc.
- Registration of business or organization with Google Maps (if not already done).
- Basic circular architecture for best chance of good ranking for key pages.
- Basic optimization of page content relevant to most important keyword combinations.
- Optimization of image tag ALT attributes relevant to most important keyword combinations.
- Optimization of page titles and heading tags.
- Optimization of page keyword and description META tags (not a big factor in boosting your ranking but plays a part in describing your website to potential customers to encourage the click).
- XML site maps constantly suggest to Google which pages to index, which pages are the most important and how often they change.
- Logistical tags to guide search engine robots around your website telling it what to index and what not to index.
- Client guide to "Guerilla Marketing" to boost ranking e.g. posting on relevant user groups, reciprication of links with well respected and high page ranked websites within the same industry or area as the client etc. Creation of an industry relevant blog to continually cross-promote the main website.
- Advice and guidance when needed.
A lot of our clients have very good success with our basic website optimization and it meets with their objectives for their new website. We also strongly recommend Pay Per Click advertising to new clients so that they can draw traffic to their new website from the get go, all for a budget which they decide. Other clients wish to dominate highly competitive markets at a national level and our Advanced Search Engine Optimization service is needed.
Advanced Search Engine Optimization Service
Our advanced search engine optimization service costs an additional $1,995 per website and of course includes everthing that comes in the standard optimization service. As the name suggests you are paying for your website to be optimized at an advanced level by SEO (Search Engine Optimization) specialists.
Some of the advanced features that really make a big difference in your real world ranking are:.
- Organization of related content into proper, well-organized silos of information. Creation of well-organized themes within a website that pay close attention to relevance to a search engine users search query and prevent cross-contamination between different logical themes.
- Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). LSA is the analysis of rules established by the LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) algorithm.
- Working with the client to maximize the number of high quality backlinks to key pages on their website.
- URL (website page address) re-writing - a special service that represents unfriendly web addresses in a format that is search engine friendly and page ranking friendly. You have no doubt seen that Amazon.com dominates Google product searches by actual product name and/or product code/sku because they actually use URL re-writing to present the web address in a readable and optimized format to include the all important full product name and codes/skus.
- Advanced optimization of page content relevant to most important keyword combinations. This includes special, professionally written content for each web page to increase page ranking and use of most important keyword combinations in first 10% of page.
- Content duplication removal to prevent reductions in page rank.
- Setup of related websites including blogs, information websites that strongly cross link to your own website to increase page ranking.
- Domain name optimization relevant to keyword combinations.
- Actual testing and improvement of page rank for all key website pages.
More Information on Search Engine Optimization
For more information on Search Engine Optimization please visit the following:
Return to the Home Page to read more about professional website design in Sarasota, Bradenton and Venice or, if you are ready for a free consultation, contact us to get started on the road to website success!
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