SEO

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is about making sure that you will be found on the web. After all, what is a gorgeous website doing for you if nobody can find you?

I guess I got you attention now. Good, then now for a little technical details.

The Hocus-Pocus of SEO

I have met clients that were paying hunderdens of dollars per months for SEO, but they had no clue what they were getting for that money. I am not saying that SEO should be cheap, but you should at least understand what SEO is and what SEO experts do, so you can decide if you are getting value for your money.

The goal of any search engine is to present results that best match what you are looking for. Search engines aren’t interested in who pays the most for advertising or for SEO. They want to show fair results. Since a search engine is a program and not a human, it is following some rules. Do note that the exact “algorithms” used by the search engines are strictly secret.

In short, most search engines are looking for keywords (the terms that are entered in the search box) in your website. Next, they are ranking your site according to your authority. You get authority by:

• Being around for a longer time, indicating that you are not a one-day fly.
• Updating your site regularly, showing that your company is still alive & kicking.
• Having many other sites link to your site, meaning others find you interesting enough to link to you.

Content & Keywords

Good SEO starts with having quality content on your website. It also involves knowing how your customers look for you and what words they use. This is called keyword research & analysis. Keywords is the core of SEO.

Once you have a good set of keywords you will make sure that you use these words in your menus, in your headers and in your texts.

Technical Side

A professional web builder will build a website that is ready for good SEO. That means that the code will use the HTML headers h1,h2, etc., that the site content is placed as high up as possible, that you can use different meta descriptions for each of your pages and much more.

WordPress is very well equipped for SEO.

Link Building

The more websites link to your website, the better your ranking. However, this does not mean that it is a smart idea to pay someone to get your site out all over the web. Some sites are built just for the purpose of adding links. Search Engines do not like these sites as they exist to manipulate the search results and they have little to no value to humans using a search engine.

So what are good places to be linked? All websites that have an actual purpose, like local.com, yellowpages.com, the Better Business Bureau, the business directories of the search engines themselves, any professional organizations, etc.

Do Not Cheat!

Cheating is against my personal ethics, but also a search engine like Google will black-list you (remove you from their search engine results completely) if they catch you cheating. Examples are: duplicate content, keyword stuffing, linkfarming. For more explanation see this Wiki article on White and Black Hat Internet Marketing.