| The Importance of SEO to Your Website Presence |
| When you search for products or information in a browser such as Google, millions of sites are returned according to the words you typed in. Most people will find what they want in the first three Google pages, although people will occasionally search through 10 pages of sites. If you want to be found, then you want to show up somewhere in those first 3 to 10 pages, and this can be assisted by search engine optimization (SEO). |
| Competition for those top 100 spots is fierce and sites constantly jostle in the ranking depending on several factors. Usually a site starts out low and works its way up. I will not guarantee you a placement on those first 10 pages because many factors are beyond my control, but I work hard to help your site make it there. |
| I insert keywords and metatags and make sure they are relevant to each page so that it will be easier to find your site during a search. However, they account for only 20% to 25% of Google's ranking system for a site. |
| Approximately 75% to 78% of Google's ranking system for a site comes from incoming links. A site without incoming links from relevent, well-ranked sites will be lucky to ever reach the top 10 pages. Usually a site that gives you a link will request one in return -- a reciprocal link. To save money I encourage you to find reciprocal links from other relevant sites. I can do that for you if you'd prefer, but it will be very expensive. There are also services that do nothing but find links for your site. Be warned: the cost for these services can leave you gasping. For larger sites the cost is worth it; for smaller sites the cost may be more than designing and building the site. |
| Google has recently started to use the time a site takes to download into consideration in its ranking system. Unfortunately, this penalizes Flash-based websites, which load slower than an HTML site. If you want to have some Flash animation, consider keeping it small or limit it to specific pages. Flash does not lend itself to SEO, so if you want to offer a Flash-based site, know that it will be more difficult to climb in the rankings. I can help by keeping the Flash as lean as possible and by including preloaders. |
| I submit your site to the major search engines and place a Google site map on your site. (A Google site map is not seen by the viewer. It is solely there for the benefit of Google.) I also include a stat counter that tracks keyword usage so you can see which keywords are being used to find you and we can tweak them to improve your search ranking. |
| The success of your site is important to me. That's why I spend time studying ways to improve my SEO skills so I can improve your search engine ranking. |
