SEO: Getting Found!

SEO:Get Found

O.K.,  so now that you know the importance of your business being online. But the old saying, “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t necessarily mean that visitors will flock to visit you once you’re online. The marketing your website is just as important as having your site built. Even more so. You’ve worked hard getting all of the pieces together and you want to make sure that existing and potential customers know you exist.

Promoting your site online (and offline) should be a key component to your overall marketing strategy. And it should be a strategy that you begin working on long before your site is completed.

Search Engine Optimization

Quite often, when consulting clients about their website design/strategy, one of the inevitable questions that arise is “How can I get my site to show on the first page of Google?” Though there may be other answers to this question, one of them is “With a lot of money and time”.

Most of the time when businesses want to optimize their site, they are generally speaking of Search Engine Optimization. But there is another term that is different but connected to SEO and that is SEM, Search Engine Marketing. Each is a process done over time, but SEM is a bit more involved.

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of searches, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.” (Wikipedia).

“Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion. Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings.” (Wikipedia).

SEO Organic Top Ten

  • Plan for SEO when your website is being developed
  • Make sure to include interesting content on your site that visitors want to read and others want to link to. In other words, create ‘remarkable’ content
  • Develop your site’s content using the right keywords and keyword phrases
  • Make sure your sites global navigation is organized properly.
  • Ensure that all HTML SEO features are uniquely optimized for each page in
    your website’s system
  • Add lots of informative content and images on your sites individual pages.  Provide detailed descriptions about your product or service.
  • Make sure that each page on your site has its own unique title containing keyword
    phrases unique to that page.
  • To give your site a chance to rise to the top of a search engine, use keyword phrases on all of the HTML SEO elements on a page
  • Don’t overdo the keyword phrases on a page. You may be penalized if you do.
  • SEM takes time and must be done on a continuous basis. Be prepared to do so.

Are you looking to optimize your site? Do you want potential customers to be able to locate you?

We can help.  Just contact A Creative Mind and we can get your SEO/SEM started right away!