S.E.O. & S.E.M. Services:

 

A Beautifully designed web site doesn't, in itself, guarantee that you will show up on Google or any other search engine when someone performs a search for similar services or products. In today's competitive design world, the code that is searched or 'indexed' by the search spiders must be clean, lightweight, and properly formatted or it can, and will adversely affect your 'search engine ranking'.

We use standard-compliant code and well researched and thought out phrases, keywords and other techniques to help your web site show up when a search is performed that reflects your customer, product or service demographic.

 

Definition - Search Engine Optimization or SEO:

 

Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of improving the quality and volume of website visitor traffic through natural or organic search engine rankings.

The earlier a website is listed within the natural search results for a desired keyword, the more search engine users will visit the site.

A website's natural search ranking on Google cannot be paid for, it must be earned through careful web design and effective SEO.

 

SEO experts from Design Elements USA reverse engineer ranking algorithms used by search engines, like Google, and consider how and why people search for specific keywords.

Web design by Design Elements USA has search engine optimization embedded in all aspects of programming and structural design.

Often, websites are mistakenly programmed in such a fashion that search engine algorithms cannot even read the site's content. In this case web design that may look excellent to the human eye, is entirely non-existent to a search engine. A flaw like this can be devastating to your natural search engine rankings.

SEO is an ever-changing field and our experts are learning new, effective and complex SEO techniques on a daily basis.

 

It should be noted that experts from Design Elements USA only use "white hat" SEO techniques.

DesignElementsUSA will never use unethical forms of SEO that are intended to fool search engines and can even get your website banned from search engines indefinitely. White hat SEO techniques are meant to cater specifically to the goals and desires of search engines.

Design Elements USA designs websites that search engines will consider extremely relevant to keywords relating to your products or services.

 

 

Definition - Search Engine Marketing or S.E.M.:

 

 

Introduction to Search Engine Marketing

Why is it better to win on the search engines than to pay for top placement? 

Because nearly 40% of search engine users click on the number one match in the search results.  Around 4% of them click on the number one sponsored match.  Do the math - that means around ten times more traffic. 

That's because people trust search engines to provide unbiased information about the Internet.  Winning top ranking on a search engine for a frequently-searched phrase can change the momentum of your business.

There are search engines (Inktomi, AltaVista, Google, Teoma, AllTheWeb, MSN, and others), there are directories (Open Directory, Yahoo, LookSmart, and others), and there are portals (AOL, Netscape, iWon, Lycos, HotBot, Excite, WebCrawler).

The key to search engines is content-optimized web pages and popularity.

The key to a directory is the title, description, and url, plus the editor's evaluation of your site.

The key to the portals is winning on the search engine or directory where they get their results.

  AOL, Netscape, Compuserve, iWon, and many more get results from Google.  Lycos gets its results from AllTheWeb.com.  AskJeeves gets it's results from Teoma.  HotBot, Excite, and WebCrawler get results from Overture, the pay-per-click search engine.

Quality - The quality of your website affects the editor's evaluation of your submission.  By 'quality', we really mean utility or usefullness.  Terrific websites are favorably reviewed and may even get 'extra credit' in the rankings by being selected as 'editor's choice'.  The quality will also influence other webmaster's decisions to link to your site.  Linking to your site increases your popularity, and thus your ranking on search engine results.

URL - The words in your url are considered by the Open Directory and LookSmart when they produce their search results.  Remember, Open Directory and LookSmart feed their results to hundreds of other search engines and portals.  For a word in a URL to help, it must be separated from other words by a dash.  For example, www.fried-chicken.com will score higher than www.friedchicken.com for the phrase 'fried chicken,' all other things being equal.

Title - The title is the most important factor in your site's eventual search engine ranking. Because directory search engines such as Yahoo only search through the title, description, and url you submit, having important keywords in your title is critical.  It's not easy though.

Description - The description is the second most important factor, for the reasons stated above.  In addition, your description must speak convincingly to the search engine user.

Content - For search engines which index your page using bots, such as AltaVista, Inktomi, and Google, the content is critical.  The ultimate example of a web page with good content would be a page from an encyclopedia.  The content must be brief, focused, and internally consistent.

Popularity - Popularity is a term used to describe Google's measurement of your site's importance to the web community.  It factors in the number, quality, and type of web pages which include links back to your page.

Optimization - After you have the highest quality website with the perfect url, finely honed titles and descriptions, focused content, and lots of websites linked back to yours, you may consider optimization. 

Optimization involves analyzing your site to determine what phrases and keywords you are winning for, analyzing the competition to see what they are winning and why, and then fine-tuning the code on your page to help you win for specific searches.

General guidelines for achieving a higher search engine ranking:

Try to observe these simple rules for titles, tags, and content:

Don't try to win top search engine placement for more than one specific search on any single page.

Keep titles as brief as possible and include your keywords in them.

Hold meta descriptions to 170 characters (including spaces) or less.

Hold meta keywords to about 10 keywords.

Make sure every piece is in harmony!

 

Search Engine Submission

Companies advertising search engine optimization say they will provide a 'submitter service' to help your search engine ranking.  Don't believe them!  They will submit you, but it will NOT help.

When submission capabilities were set up on search engines, the programmers wanted to grow their databases quickly to improve their service to users.  Later, they found that Internet marketing companies were building software to submit the same site every day. 

Those sites were performing well on the search engines because their ranking would not erode.  So the programmers began to exercise their trump card.  They would change the algorithms in the programming itself.  Now if you submit frequently, you are penalized. 

And, over-submission gets you kicked off a search engine for a very long time.

How can a search engine find you if you never use a submitter?  Everyone has heard of spiders or bots - software that finds websites for the search engines to index.  Are you aware how those spiders actually work?

Spiders ride hyperlinks.  When a spider is on a website and finds a link, it follows that link to the new website.  The more sites that link to yours, the better chance you have to be spidered regularly.  And search engine algorithms give plus points to sites that spiders find.

And, even if your site stands completely unlinked, you will still be indexed eventually if you are on a SERVER with at least one other indexed website.

Hopefully, we have cleared up a myth.  Because you should be aware that firms marketing a submitter service are selling you something less than worthless.

 

Directory Registration

Despite our warnings about submitting to search engines, there is a certain degree of submission that MUST occur - registration with directories.

Directories are website indexes maintained and updated entirely by human input. The best known of these is Yahoo.  There is also the Open Directory Project (ODP), which supplies its database to hundreds of search engines, including AOL and Netscape.  Your placement in the ODP is therefore as important as Yahoo.

Submitting to a directory is like meeting the parents - you only get one chance to make that terrific impression.  If you blow it, you'll never get their respect.  You have to be incredibly careful when writing the description of your site.  Descriptions must be less than 170 characters.  They must contain NO marketing language. 

If the editor thinks you're trying to get away with something, he or she will crop your description down to four or five words and NEVER change it.  Describe the content of your website, not your business. 

Get your submission right the first time.

 

In Conclusion:

 

SEO is not as easy as it may seem. Many, Many hours of research( which can be an expensive proposition) are required to determine the optimum combination of descriptive Keywords and Phrases that best describe your website and your service, product or market niche'.

 

Once the research has been completed, we move onto strategy : What are your goals for your website? Do you wish to market many items within your chosen niche? How can you make yourself stand out among your cometitors? What do you have to offer that the others do not? How can we target those areas of your business to keep you in the 'Top Ten' search results? What will be the most effective use of the Phrases and Keywords we researched?

 

Now that we have a clear strategy in mind, armed with the researched Keyword and Phrase results, we begin to optimize your website by using these armaments in high placement areas of your website. Not just including them in Meta Tags, but, more importantly, using them in your page titles, descriptions, webpage copy and links, and to describe images and other files presented in your website content.

 

Now that the above steps are complete, we then check all our code for any mistakes ( hey! - we're human!!)... via Spellcheck and W3C Code and CSS Compliance checks and testing.

The next step in the equation is to alert the search engines and directories to the fact that your website exists. We do that through a process caled ' Search Engine Submission'. Manully, or throught the use of software, each Search Engine or Directory Service is informed of your website's location(URL), market niche, relevant keywords and phrases - or subject matter- and is asked to 'spider' the website to then include it's findings in their particular search results.

 

Soon Thereafter (usually with 48-144 hours), your optimised website will begin to show up in the search engine result pages (SERP's)

Actual ranking result or placement depends alot upon the amount of searches for your particular Keywords or Phrases as well as the volume of high-quality websites that share those particular Keywords or phrases with you.

 

These methods and others are available to all our clients...

 

Contact Us Today to see how Design Elements USA can help you Optimize your Website Content and Market your Website to the Search Engines...