Search Engine Optimization Primer

Why Websites Matter

Traditional Media is Now Used to Advertise Your Website URL
For years businesses advertised their goods and services by including printed information in the newspaper, or by purchasing space in the Yellow Pages. Additionally, electronic media spots, such as radio or television commercials, were used by vendors to communicate information using moving and still visual images and sound.
The Internet changed all of this --- a business website provides the platform for communicating text, moving and still visual images and sound. An effective website supercedes other forms of advertising media because it can actively push information to the viewer, and it can pull data and information by providing prompts and requests.
To appreciate how central and important the business website has become to effective advertising and marketing, one needs only to consider the information now presented by traditional media. Whether print, newspaper,TV, radio, billboards, or direct mail, the medium is always used to direct its audience to .... a business website address (called a URL). Traditional Media is Now Used to Advertise Your Website URL.

Lost Opportunities

No Website Means Lost Opportunities – 365 days a year x 24 hours a day
Society today revolves around the information gathered from desktop computers, laptop computers, car computers and GPS navigation systems, iPads, iPhones, smartphones, and satellite and interactive TV. The world of information is available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. Business information, effectively communicated on a website, leverages all of these technologies – 365 x 24.

Search Engine Optimization Principles

Creating an effective business website means presenting and building information in a way that makes it easy for web search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing (“Search Engines”) to “see” or “find” your website. When a web search is conducted, the engine uses the search term or phrase entered, and responds with a list of sites that are presented as responses to the search. The goal of Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”) is to design your web presence and include terms which maximize the chances that Search Engines find your site when a search is conducted. It also includes designing your site content and data in a way that ensures that a link to your site appears as one of the first suggestions in the response to the search query.

SEO Principles

A. SEO Principle #1: Use Geographically Targeted Keywords and Phrases
While the Internet makes global sales possible, in the Corporate Business world, it is essential to take care of the neighborhood. For many companies, 90% of their business comes from within a 10 mile radius to the office facility.

SEO Web Sales provides SEO Services to help:

(1) identify and compose the geographically targeted words and phrases that are essential for recognition by your local market; and

(2) place these terms in the right locations in your website, to ensure maximum effectiveness to the Search Engines.

  B. SEO Principle # 2: Contact Information Is King

Your business name, address and phone number must be prominently displayed in the right format and in the essential areas of your site pages. Contact info is the most important piece of data a business can present, and it must be found instantly by the eyes of the person reading your page, as well as by the Search Engine. There's no way around it, under it, over it or through it. Contact info which is highlighted in this way, builds credibility and ranking with Google Places and other listing pages.

Get found, not lost. SEO Web Sales.

C. SEO Principle # 3: Contact Harvesting

Business growth means driving people to your website and maintaining the continued attention of the viewer. Staying in contact with clients or customers is essential. Pushing information to them, periodically, pulls them back to the site and to your services. SEO Web Sales can design and implement a contact capture form for your site --- it will capture the site visitor's data and make it easy for you to push additional information, periodic promotions and newsletters, renewing interest and attention.

D. SEO Principle #4: Online Directories -- Be Here Now

Citations are references to your business found in online directories. Here are examples of online directories:

• Yelp http://www.yelp.com/business?country=US
• City Search http://www.citysearch.com/members/start?refers=engage
• MerchantCircle http://www.merchantcircle.com/signup/
• Yellow Pages http://listings.yellowpages.com/Services/ServiceClaimSearch.aspx
• Local.com https://advertise.local.com/
• CityVoter http://cityvoter.com/

Building citations and having them placed in directories is not black magic – it is a process. SEO Web Sales can guide you, first by helping you assess the placement and effectiveness of competitors' citations. We will show you the benefits and techniques of effective citation building, and teach you how to run citation reports and data assessments.

E. SEO Principle #5: Reviews Drive Traffic and Build Reputation

Negative reviews posted on the web can interrupt traffic flow and damage the goodwill associated with your business. However, a bad review can also provide necessary feedback, identifying bona fide weaknesses in your business. Reviews on the following sites provide opportunities to respond: Yelp, Google, Google Places, Super Pages, City Search, Yahoo and Judy’s Book. SEO Web Sales can assist you by formulating an approach for keeping continual track of the most important review forums.