Search Engine Optimization

If someone uses a search engine to look for your solution or product, will they find your web site on the first few pages of the search results?

The objective of search engine optimization, or SEO, is to cause your site to move up in the search results rankings for relevant search terms, so that people who are searching for your product, service or company will find your site more easily and quickly. The benefit of search engine optimization is an increase in the number of relevant visitors to your web site without incurring per-visitor charges or fees.

Top Search Engine Ranking
Most search engines display ten results per page, out of hundreds or even millions of matches. If you want lots of relevant visitors to your website, then you want your site to have a top-ten ranking in the search results for keywords that are relevant to your business. People rarely search past the top-ten search results, and almost never past the top 30. So being number 31 is not much help.

Most people use search engines to find information, products or services. They don’t want to dig for relevant results. They prefer to see the most relevant search results for a given search term presented first. The better the prioritization of the search results, the happier the searcher will be, and the more likely that they will use the same search engine next time they need to search. So most search engines, which make the bulk of their money on advertising, are extremely interested in giving the searchers what they want.

Achieving Top Search Engine Ranking
There are many different ways to try to achieve top search engine rankings without paying a fee. Remember, most people are searching for information, so making your web pages informative is the place to start if you want to achieve high rankings over time.

Some SEO practitioners try to trick the search engine ranking programs to achieve higher rankings for their site. But as these ranking programs have caught on, the tricks have stopped working and the sites that used them have gotten penalized by the search engines. Basically, any technique that is employed primarily for the “benefit” of the search engine ranking algorithm is suspect and is likely to do a great deal more harm to your ranking than good. If you are considering contracting for SEO services with a third party, it is extremely important that you ask about and understand their policies toward search engine optimization.

Achieving top search engine rankings for your web site is largely about content. You need to provide good, on-topic information. But it is also easy to throw up roadblocks in the way of the search engine spiders and crawlers that periodically visit your site to classify the content. Examples of roadblocks are Flash intros on your home page (these obstruct humans as well as crawlers) and text displayed in the form of images (readable by humans but not by spiders).

It’s amazing to us how many web designers don’t create sites that are both search engine-friendly and human-friendly. The fact is, your site can and should be useful and informative for humans and still easy for search engine spiders to index. Market-Vantage builds and renovates websites that meet both objectives. If you already have a web design firm that you like, we can work with them to ensure that the search engines will like your new site as much as you and visitors do!

Keyword Analysis
Search Engine Optimization first requires a solid Keyword Analysis. Keyword Analysis results are different for every company; therefore we perform a custom process for each client. Once we have identified a list of keywords or keyword phrases (search terms) that are likely to bring relevant visitors to your site, we can optimize your site on a page-by-page basis.

As part of our SEO process, Market-Vantage reviews and edits each page of your web site to optimize search engine visibility of the targeted search terms. Search engine optimization includes developing HTML Title, Keywords and Description tags for each page. We review and edit all written web page copy and headings.

Link Optimization
Market-Vantage can make recommendations regarding third party sites that are appropriate for reciprocal links which can be very helpful for achieving top search results. As an option, we will also contact these organizations on your behalf to request a link and provide them with optimized link content, keeping records of sites contacted and outcomes.

We can also advise you regarding submission or Paid Inclusion fees that might be worth the cost for your company. Once your site has been optimized, we hand-submit the relevant pages of the site to the major search engines, directories and any Paid Inclusion programs you have decided on.

• Planning and Strategy
  
  
• Website Promotion
  
  
• Visitor Conversion Optimization



• Website Visitor Tracking