If your business relies on a website to generate leads or orders, optimizing your site for search engines is a cost-effective way to increase traffic. 360 Business Consulting can help you increase your prominence within the major search engines, which leads to more visitors, more leads, and more orders.

What is Search engine Optimization (SEO)?

I have a great-looking website. Isn’t that enough?

What makes a good search engine-optimized site?

How do search engines find websites?

What can a good SEO company do for me?

Some companies advertise hundreds of submissions for pennies. Why would I pay more?

If I have my site optimized, will I be on the first page of most searches?

Okay, my site’s being optimized and submitted. I’m done, right?

Are there any guarantees?

What is Search engine Optimization (SEO)?
Major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and Altavista, are common stops for users looking for a website or company to meet their needs. In 2003, it was estimated that 50% of new traffic driven to the average website came from a search engine referrals. But as the Web has exploded to billions — if not trillions — of pages, finding the right site with the right content has become more difficult.

Many users type in a keyword or phrase in hopes of finding the right company or information. Oftentimes they even enter a company’s name when trying to find their website. If they are confronted with hundreds of pages and can’t quickly find your company’s website, they will go somewhere else.
SEO is the process of making your website more likely to appear high on a search engine’s results page.

I have a great-looking website. Isn’t that enough?
Search engines work by sending out automated programs (bots) that comb the web for sites, content and information. These programs follow links, gather information and submit the pages to a vast database that matches content with keywords or phrases entered by visitors to the search engine.

To be included within a search engine’s results, your site must be cataloged and your links and information must be accessible to the bots in a format that they understand, which can be very different from what is pleasing or simple for a human to see.

Much of the SEO work that is done, is actually invisible to Web users, but makes it easier for bots to find what they are looking for. While animation, fancy links and dynamic content may be interesting and compelling to human visitors, bots are often confused or oblivious to these common design features. And if a bot cannot read your page, it will skip it and go somewhere else.

Good SEO techniques can work together with good design; it just takes a collaborative approach between designers and optimizers. Ultimately, the goal is to drive traffic and usage to your site.

What makes a good search engine-optimized site?
Search engine techniques are being refined each day, but the basics tend to stay consistent. These include:

Content. Search engines love content. Having clear, well-worded content helps your site appear to be more relevant to search engines. If your pages are mostly pictures and images, search images may assume there is nothing beyond the home page, and condemn your site to the backwater of search results.

Meta-tags. Make certain each page has effective titles, good descriptions and focused meta-tags. Meta-tags are words or phrases that help describe the content of your page. These tags are usually invisible to visitors, but help describe your page to bots and search engines. Good tags, combined with solid content, are a winning combination.

Images & Links. All images and links need to be more descriptive than “image1.jpg” or “Click here”. Bots catalog the words included within links and image names and proper wording can help increase your exposure.

Backlinks. In general, the more sites that link to your site, the more likely a search engine is to find your site and rank it highly. Backlinks need to be targeted, and developing a network of sites that refer to yours can be an effective way to increase traffic.

Advertising. Sometimes, the best way to gain exposure is to pay for it. Keyword search advertising is becoming a popular way to guarantee upfront exposure. Advertising can also be expensive, however, and needs to be highly-targeted and closely tracked to be cost-effective for most businesses.

Directories. Sites that catalog other sites into neat categories are called directories. These directories range from online Yellow Pages sites to Yahoo! to specialized sites that focus on one particular niche or interest. Getting listed on these sites (and many are free), is a good way to build traffic, backlinks and exposure.

How do search engines find websites?
Search engines find pages in one of three ways:

1. Through direct submission. While most of the major engines are not taking direct submissions anymore, Google — by far the most popular search engine — still does. A well-developed page, submitted in the right format may get indexed within a few weeks.

2. Links from other sites (backlinks). When a bot searches a site, it tends to follow all links on the site, possibly stumbling onto your site and indexing it also.

3. Paid inclusion. Some sites will allow you to pay to be on their searches. Depending on the site and its audience, this may be an effective strategy.

What can a good SEO company do for me?
Solid SEO companies can help you format your website in a way that gets noticed by bots. They can help you develop content, form relationships that create backlinks, recommend directories and advertising strategies, and submit your site to relevant search engines.

Most importantly, a SEO company should help you develop a strategy for implementing and tracking your results. Most websites can log where traffic is coming from. Reporting programs can give you a report on your standings in major search engines. By knowing where you start, and running frequent reports on how your standings change as you try new strategies, a SEO company should be able to help you fine tune your site for maximum, verifiable results.

Some companies advertise hundreds of submissions for pennies. Why would I pay more?
While you can submit your site to many search engines, only a handful account for most Web traffic. But submission is only one part of the equation. Just because a site is submitted doesn’t mean that it will get indexed or rated highly by search engines. In fact, there are free programs that allow you to submit your site on your own. These programs, however, and companies that charge small fees for submitting your site, do not provide the reporting, backlinks or site optimization that actually deliver results.

If I have my site optimized, will I be on the first page of most searches?
Probably not. Unless you have a very narrow focus, there is simply too much competition out there. Common search keywords can generate millions of results. Even if your site is significantly optimized, appearing on page 9 or 10 of a search might be all you can attain.

What you should expect, however, is the following:

Your brand name should appear on the first page. If someone searches specifically for your company, they should find you on the first page of their search. While this seems obvious, it is seldom true. Go on to Google and search for your company name using one or two words only. The results may surprise you.

Focused key words should return good results. While you may not appear near the top of the search when someone searches for the keyword “Apparel,” you may want to aim for being the head of the class when someone searches for “Children’s Apparel in Orange County”.

Significant improvement from where you are today. Any SEO program should make your standings better. And better standings will result in more visitors. Any company that can’t deliver that, hasn’t delivered anything of value.

Okay, my site’s being optimized and submitted. I’m done, right?
For the time being, yes. A good SEO program includes monitoring for some period of time to watch what is happening and includes maintenance to tweak results. But search engines change their strategies frequently, and new companies come into the market every day and compete for top listing. So plan on re-optimizing and submitting your site twice a year for maximum results.

Are there any guarantees?
No company can guarantee what type of placement you will receive. But any company should guarantee your satisfaction. Reasonable expectations, along with a good system for increasing traffic is the goal. If a company won’t stand behind your satisfaction, you need a new supplier.

Click here to contact us for a free, no-obligation evaluation of your needs.

Click here to learn about our search engine optimization programs.