Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has emerged as one of the most valuable professional skills that a person can have. An optimized site can bring its owner a constant flow of free traffic through search engines. When a website owner compares the long term costs of advertising vs the short term cost of optimizing their site, they will always favor the optimization. Because BristleconeWeb™ is founded on the principle of building successful websites every time, you can be rest assured that your website will be optimized to bring your website to the top.
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How to find out if a web design firm understands SEO |
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Our clients are often confronted with a multitude of firms claiming to provide SEO services. But are these companies credible? Usually not. SEO has become a buzzword that firms use to sell more websites despite very limited experience/understanding of SEO. So here's what we recommend. Get your firm on the phone and ask to speak with someone regarding SEO. Ask the following questions:
- After optimization, how long will it take for my website to rank in the search engines?
- Can you guarantee results for my website?
- What is pagerank?
- Why is pagerank important?
- What is the difference between white-hat and black-hat seo?
- Are there any good conferences that I could attend regarding SEO?
- What conferences have you attended regarding SEO?
- Can you offer examples of clients who are currently ranking top 5 in Google for a popular keyphrase?
Want more questions? Why not get them directly from the source:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291
Now, for the answers:
- Somewhere between a few days to a year or more. Yes, it actually does vary that much. Ranking time can be affected by the scale of the project, site structure quality, site content quality, page rank, domain age, and many many other factors.
- Quoted from Google, "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google."
- Quoted from Google, "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using
its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value.
In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote,
by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume
of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that
casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important"
weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important"." For a better explanation, see our article on pagerank.
- This is the heart of what determines which sites are listed first! http://www.google.com/technology/
- Black-hat marketers attempt to mislead search engines and visitors in order to gain higher rankings. Although it might work temporarily, these practices can get your website black-listed! Not a good idea if you care about your domain.
- SES (search engine strategies), SMX, Pubcon
- Regular attendance to SES
- Yes! Contact us for examples!
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- Website Framework - If your
website is not optimized from the ground up, all other efforts are
diminished. Search Engine Optimization requires your web designer to
do much more than build a good looking site. What good is a great
looking site if no one sees it?
- Content Articles
- The most significant impact a website owner can do to improve his/her
own site is to write EFFECTIVE articles for their website. This does
not mean writing arbitrary articles, or spamming away at keywords you
like. Effective writing requires research, persuasive writing, and
unique information.
- Links - Search engines view each link to your site as a vote for your site. The more votes your site gets, the more power it has.
- Convert -
Close attention should be paid to website statistics / analytics in
order to ensure you deliver a great experience to your visitors. High
conversions don't happen until you pull out all the stops.
- $ - The best part of owning a website... when it is making you money, day and night, whether you work or don't work!
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Flash and Search Rankings |
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If search engine rankings are important to your website's success, and you are considering a flash based website, this article is a must-read.
What is flash?
Flash is a tool that allows websites to display movement and sounds on their website, much like an interactive video.
Why is it important?
Using flash navigation and flash transitions between pages of your site can have an incredibly negative impact on your rankings. This is very important to recognize from the beginning. After all, what good is a great looking website if no one sees it? Lets get a little better understanding of why search engines and flash do not work well together.
Search engines send robots all over the web to crawl web pages and record any content they find. These robots are very good at recording text, but this is not the case with flash and images. Take the following example. What is the difference between the black text and the blue text?
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The difference is that the blue is not text, it is an image. You can see this by highlighting the words; notice that the blue image does not let you highlight individual letters, only the image as a whole. Search engine robots do not know that that the image contains the word 'example' in blue; they are only aware that there is an image on the page. Search engines have the same limitation with flash. They are aware that the flash exists, but do a very poor job at recognizing what is contained within the flash.
Other problems with flash?
For many businesses, the costs for flash development do not justify the additional expense. Flash also limits the browsing experience so that visually impaired and those with slower connections cannot visit your site. Sites with extensive effects require users to wait for the page to load...not a good idea in the fast paced web environment. Flash intros are an especially poor choice. Finally, flash will not integrate to your content management system, meaning all changes to your site will require additional work from your developer.
So what is the solution?
Modern CSS coding and design allows the creation of very slick looking websites with mouse hover effects. Skipping the flash doesn't mean you are stripping your site down to a boring interface; the look can look quite close to a flash design. In all likelihood, the novelty of all those extra effects wears off quickly and can begin to irritate your visitors.
When to use flash?
Just like images, flash can be used as a great bonus to any web page. Interactive product demonstrations, slideshows, and videos are just a few of the great ways to use flash as a compliment to your website.
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