In addition to providing a wide spectrum of website design services, Igniting Business also offers search engine optimization that truly delivers results.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and do I need it?
Search Engine Optimization, known in the techie world as SEO, is the ever-evolving and rapidly changing combination of techniques that developers employ to tame the beasts, known as search engines, which dictate your importance on the web (i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.). These search engines factor in hundreds of variables that form advanced algorithms that all determine "PageRank," which is how and where your website pulls up on the search engine results.
Does that sound very technical and perhaps even over-complicated?
If you said no, then we would recommend you start working for our company.
If you said yes, it is our hope that we can better inform you what Search Engine Optimization truly is and alleviate some of the myths and misconceptions about search engine optimization.
One thing that many clients, and even web designers as well, often overlook is the fact that you can have an incredible looking website, yet it pulls up poorly in the search engines. It does not matter how fancy your website is and how many bells and whistles it has if no one is able to ever find it.
Optimization of your site for search engines generally breaks down into three categories:
• Website Structure, Layout, and Content
• Search Engine Interpretation and Guidance
• Interaction with Other Websites (Linking)
Website Structure, Layout, and Content
Website structure is how your website is designed as far as the scripting and also how easy and efficiently you can navigate your website using the menu items and internal links.
Layout involves how you organize your content on each page, which communicates to the search engines what is the most important material and what should it look at first and foremost. Think of it as a teacher instructing the students what material and concepts are the most important to grasp for the exam.
Arguably the most important aspect on your website is the content itself. In regards to SEO, Content is King! To be considered important, content must be useful, relevant (both to the searches and to the rest of your site), unique, fresh, and organized and emphasized in a coherent and logical manner. Bear in mind that content includes more than just static text; in fact, search engines like Google place an exceptional amount of emphasis on video and image content.
Search Engine Interpretation and Guidance
Sometimes the search engine computer programs (also called robots, crawlers, spiders, bots etc.) need a bit more information in order to index (record and interpret for search engine results) correctly. This is where robot commands, 301 redirects, sitemaps, image maps, keywords, descriptions, business listings, and plenty of other useful tools come in handy.
Interaction with Other Websites (Website Linking)
Most people know that it is useful to have other websites post a link to your website purely based off the fact that people may follow it to your website. However, search engines also use this in determining your websites importance. A search engine looks at how many sites are linking to yours, what they are saying about your website, and the credibility of the websites referencing yours. Likewise, outgoing links (linking to another website) on your website can be beneficial, but also has the potential to be harmful.
In other words, if other credible websites show that your site is important by posting a link to yours, search engines take that into account when calculating your page rank. However, negative penalities do exist for simply trying to gain a large amount of irrelevant inbound links. Finding the balance of credible and useful inbound links are essential to building your website's authority on the internet.
Tying It Together
Recognizing that there are numerous factors that affect your search engine ranking is very critical. The next step is to work with your design and search engine optimization company to develop a plan for designing and optimizing your website while catering to both the visitors and search engines. Igniting Business specializes in Search Engine Optimization and would be happy to sit down and work out an SEO plan that would assist you in reaching your goals of getting your website to rank well on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.