Search Engine Optimization

“Good, Better, Best…never let it rest. Get your Good Better, and your Better Best.”

This timeless quotation is applicable in all facets of life, even when it comes to marketing your business on the web. When dealing with search engine optimization (SEO), businesses can settle for a good, better or best approach. However, search engine optimization is something that needs to be revisited frequently to make sure a website will remain competitive.  You can ‘never let it rest’ if you want to keep your website traffic ahead of your competition. More on the approach in a minute, but first a little background…

A successful website contains content that is written with two visitors in mind—people and search engines. Obviously, people are the ones who peruse websites looking for services, products and the answers to their questions. They have the potential to become the customers of a business through the successful marketing of a website. The search engines are the tool used to find a website and are simply programs contained on servers that catalog and store endless amounts of information, which becomes readily accessible whenever anyone performs a search. Writing logical and concise web page copy so that it can appear on the first page of a search query is a tricky thing, but it is doable. The king of the search engines is Google, so getting a website to appear on the first page or two a Google search is a good goal.

The trick to preparing page content is writing it so that it has appeal to your reader, yet also contains the important relevant information that search engines require. A general rule of thumb is 3% of the web page should contain keywords about what the website is selling, whether it is tangible goods, services, or information.

A common occurrence in business is solicitations from search engine optimization companies claiming they can ‘guarantee’ #1 page rankings for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars.  This is not an incorrect statement, but it IS misleading. Let’s look at an example of how this would work: If a business owner in Washington, DC is trying to sell a product–for instance bicycles– a search on bicycles is so general there will be a million hits in a search. A search on ‘bicycles, Washington DC’ will narrow it down a bit but probably not enough to make a difference to find the bicycle website.  But if the SEO company convinces the business owner that a search on ‘bicycles, Washington DC snowstorm’ will give them #1 rankings and then proceeds to revise the home page copy to include information about snowstorms in DC as well as about bicycles, then sure… that page will probably rank #1 in a search.  What competition is there to sell bicycles to people in Washington DC when it is snowing?  None!  But the SEO company is not lying—they did make that phrase rank #1, however it serves no lucrative purpose to the bicycle business owner.  Probably no one is going to type that phrase into a search engine. In short, don’t pick a search engine company that manipulates the data (and you) but rather a company that analyzes the facts and successfully applies an SEO plan that has a chance to improve website rankings.

Then there is ‘black hat SEO’. Remember the old cowboy movies where the bad guy always seemed to wear a black hat?  This is what black hat SEO is—bad!  Developers who apply sneaky tactics to try to raise a website’s rankings put a website at risk. Google and other search engines will blacklist a website caught employing unsavory tactics, to the point that the website will not be found in a search AT ALL.

White hat SEO (good guys wear the white hat!) employs affordable, organic SEO practices that assist a website in the search engines. At Gallop Web Services we practice white hat SEO always keeping in mind the goal is providing a successful website for our customers.

Now for the Good, Better, Best approach…

• GOOD – At Gallop Web Services, we want your new website to be successful, so therefore we automatically provide good, basic SEO to any customer website free of charge. We work with our customers to help them understand how to include keywords and phrases when writing their page content, so they will have a chance to be found by the search engines. Our basic SEO consultation and the tips we give you, will help you to understand how you can best optimize your website when writing your content. During web development, we will include within the website code a title, description, keyword list and tags for the website pages. All pages of the website will contain clean code that is fully compliant to the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

• BETTER – In addition to the above, during SEO consultation we will work with you to discover unique titles, descriptions and keywords for EACH web page, and advise you on how to incorporate that uniqueness to each of your pages to improve rankings with the search engines. In addition, the website will be submitted to the major search engines and local directory listings (storefront businesses only).

• BEST – Advanced search engine optimization includes all that is mentioned above, but prior to establishing what the titles, descriptions and keywords should be an in-depth analysis takes place. Analysis includes research on keyword usage that is applicable to your business as well as comparison to your nearest website competitor to discover their weaknesses/strengths, so we can determine how to give your website an edge and hopefully improve website rankings. Rankings are not guaranteed, however steps taken are beneficial. Analytic code is installed on your website and automatic tracking reports set to deliver to you so that you can monitor your website and determine your return on investment (ROI).

If you are interested in hearing more about SEO, contact us to let us know.  For a small evaluation fee, we would be happy to review your website to help you determine what your web marketing needs may be.