Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Frequently Asked Questions
OUR SEO ETHICS 2
SUCCESS THROUGH TESTING 2
CORE SEO ELEMENTS 2
META TAGS AND TITLE TAGS 2
HTML HEADINGS 3
HYPERLINKING STRATEGIES 3
OPTIMIZING IMAGES 4
COPYWRITING STRATEGIES 4
UNDERSTANDING “AUTHORITATIVENESS” THROUGH BACKLINKING 4
BACKLINKING STRATEGIES 5
DEEP INTERNAL PAGE OPTIMIZATION 6
ARTICLE MARKETING 6
BLOG MARKETING 6
LINK EXCHANGE 7
PRESS RELEASES 7
OUR SEO ETHICS
We believe that for successful Search Engine Optimization, it is not necessary to use cloaking or to spam the search engines to achieve high rankings. We follow the guidelines of Google, Yahoo, and MSN and achieve high rankings for our clients through “White Hat” SEO. “White Hat SEO” is simply SEO done without spam. We take this very seriously and take every measure to protect the brands of our clients.
SUCCESS THROUGH TESTING
LaDezign.com is always monitoring the latest optimization concepts and techniques in use at other web sites. We are constantly adding new strategies to our optimization arsenal so that our clients enjoy the benefits of having both time-tested proven methods as well as cutting edge ideas. Since targeted traffic is the key to a successful online business, we also evaluate the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN to stay on top of the best ranking strategies. Each search engine has its’ own unique algorithm and what works on one may not necessarily work on another. We are always running tests to determine what will work best for our clients. These tests focus on conversion techniques as well as both “On Page Optimization” and building links to your web site from other web sites.
CORE SEO ELEMENTS
◊ Keyword research to develop a list of search terms (ie. keyword phrases) related to your site.
◊ Competitor evaluation to build a library of best practices in your industry.
◊ Directory Analysis of your navigation structure and page naming conventions.
◊ On-Page Analysis of your content structure (ie. text content and html allocations).
◊ Meta-tag, Title tags, Headings and other HTML codes
◊ Copywriting standards to emphasize and highlight “keyword rich content”.
◊ Backlink building activities (3rd party links to your site) to elevate your “authoritative” power.
META TAGS AND TITLE TAGS
Our technical experts will review the current Website’s application architecture, meta, title, navigation systems, scripts, and layout to identify any required corrections or opportunities to improve performance. LaDezign.com may create a custom formula for every page within your site in order to maximize the value of the site’s crawlability for Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Meta tags enable search engines to detect what your page is about and how they should treat it. Meta tags are not displayed to the visitors viewing your site, but they influence search engine rankings. Unlike Meta tags the title tags are viewed not only by search engines but also by the visitors. The words in the title tag appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP).
Title tags are unquestionably one of the "three important factors" as far as the algorithmic weight given to the factors considered by Search Engines. They are equally important as your visible text copy and the links pointing to your pages. No search engine optimization process is complete until you've added proper keywords to the <TITLE> tag. By following search engine guidelines, we create unique title tags and Meta tags for pages sitewide. The site currently also uses extensive javascript that now appears at the top of each page and this coding should be pushed to an external web page.
HTML HEADINGS
<H1> and <H2>, are very effective search engine optimization tools. The use of the HTML <H1 ... H3> tags place much needed emphasis on main keywords and phrases, and boost organic and PPC positions. The creation of heading tags has to be an extremely methodical process requiring the correct balance of keywords and natural language, as the heading must compel the visitors to read further. Randomly stuffing keywords inside header tags may result in an artificial boost in search engine ranking, however once the search engines index the pages several times the boost will be lost, and often times the site will be placed in to the Google sandbox. The LaDezign.com team will intentionally create headings that will not only include the most vital keyword(s) but will also enable search engines to accept the headings as positive values for on-page optimization.
HYPERLINKING STRATEGIES
We use linking strategy to promote the targeted keywords and phrases on the search engines. We segregate keywords in the body of paragraphs and use the anchor tag to link them to related pages within the site. It is vitally important to create logical “funnels” to direct either human users intuitively through your site and/or search engine spiders as well as they ultimately collect all your content and assign values based on their own algorithmic priorities. The more you can do to make the process of classification easier for the spiders, the better your rankings will be. This includes not only where pages reside in terms of what directories, but also how you name the pages. The more keywords you use in your directory folders plus your filenames the more optimal your rankings will be.
To provide provisions for the engines to be able to easily get around your site and index every page, you should ideally have a text based navigation structure. Drop down menus, image maps and frameset menus are difficult, and in some cases impossible, for the search engine spiders to follow. Our aim is to make it easy for the spiders to crawl through our each web page. This can be done either by using a completely text based navigation system or providing text links throughout each page's copy. The link structure should allow the user and spider to get to any page from any page.
OPTIMIZING IMAGES
The alt-text is the text that describes the images, and since the search engine spiders are not able to know what an image describes, the alt-text provides a way for the search engines to see what each image on the site is. Our team will work hand in hand with your web administrator to ensure that graphic files are properly coded throughout your pages.
COPYWRITING STRATEGIES
To successfully attain top rankings in the search engines, we recommend that the words on your web pages should never be an afterthought but rather a major investment in your optimization campaign. A well-optimized title and a good heading certainly boost search engine rank but it will turn ineffective unless the page also contains some keyword-rich body text. Content is what the search engines really want to index. If logistics allowed them they would look at nothing else on a page except content. Adequate descriptive content allows search engine spiders to extract obvious targeted keywords and phrases.
Content must be thoughtfully constructed to ensure correct information will be included in the search engines' indexing equation. This is essential to generate enough information for search engine spiders so that they correctly index the web site. We at LaDezign.com make a great deal of effort to ensure that the spiders will extract only the targeted keywords and phrases placed strategically within the content. Through key phrase analysis it can be determined whether or not these phrases are displayed as prominently as necessary to influence the indexing process.
UNDERSTANDING “AUTHORITATIVENESS” THROUGH BACKLINKING
The process of becoming “authoritative” is also known as “getting Backlinks” to your site. It is arguably one of the most important factors for achieving optimal rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN. In simple terms, the idea is that the more contextually relevant sites that link to your site, the more valuable your site is perceived to be by the search engines. All major crawler-based search engines (e.g. Google, MSN and Yahoo) use link analysis as part of their ranking algorithm. It’s very difficult for anyone to "fake” good links, and spam search engines by manipulating the keywords and content on their web pages. Link analysis gives search engines definite information of determining which pages are good for particular phrases, keywords.
Your “Link Popularity Rating” is a combination of:
· The Number Of Sites Linking To You
· The Words That Are Used To Describe Your Site In The Links
· The Relevance Of Those Sites As They Relate To Your Subject Matter
· The Link Popularity Of The Sites That Link To You
· The Search Engine Rankings Of The Sites That Link To You
To increase your Link Popularite Rating you need to undertake a backlinking building process and it iis an extremely time consuming job. It is usually said that you can either build backlinks or you can concentrate on your core business. Obviously the smart decision would be to give more time to your business and outsource link building activity to a professional Search Engine optimization company.
By gaining quality links to your site, you improve your “link popularity score” and consequently your ranking in search engines. We work towards getting quality links from related websites (as opposed to links from any sites) and monitor the flow of bi-directional traffic. We manually analyze each site so that we can identify the individual page where we would like the link, write the text for the link that is in sync with the context of the target site, and then propel the webmaster to indulge in link campaign activity by sending a professionally written mail.
An additional strategy of gaining link popularity is by using reciprocal links and Link Exchanges as a means of promoting your website, product, or service resulting in a very effective and inexpensive way to help your website grow and succeed online. It is a Win-Win game since the website gets the traffic from the linked sites and at the same time get high ranking in search engines. With the current importance of linking campaigns it is advised that you develop a link popularity strategy for your web site.
LaDezign.com will develop quality inbound links that are critical for search engine rankings and thus drive the extra traffic from linked sites and search engines.
BACKLINKING STRATEGIES
LaDezign.com will take extra time to research prospective link partners. These links will come from directories and websites that are related in theme or industry to your site. We DO NOT use links from unauthorized “Free For All” link farms. LaDezign.com uses a unique combination of many of the following methods to obtain direct relevant links to your main site and its interior pages.
· Directory Submissions (free and paid)
· Article Submissions
· Press Release Distribution
· Contacting webmasters of relevant sites, and requesting links
· Link Exchange Program
· Blogging
· Video Marketing
· Social Networking
DEEP INTERNAL PAGE OPTIMIZATION
Gaining rankings just for your home page is like putting one sprinkle on an ice cream cone. To gain the full effect of ranking domination you need to cover the entire scoop of ice cream (ie. the Search engines) with lots of sprinkles. Deep optimization is the process of getting links to internal pages on your site. You may be familiar with the term “long tail keywords”. This is just another way of describing the process of getting ranked for “secondary” keyword phrases that have more than one word in the search phrase.
ARTICLE MARKETING
Syndicating articles (also known as “Article Marketing”) is a tested and effective way of building name recognition, increasing traffic and improving organic search engine rankings. LaDezign.com can help manage the process of getting articles written about your products and services and mass distribute one article every week though the duration of phase I. Articles written should be centered on brands, products and services relevant to your industry. The overall goal is to include dozens if not hundreds of keyword phrases within the articles to give you a broad scope of keyword ranking coverage. LaDezign.com can register your site with up to 150-200 article directories which will display and distribute the articles submitted to them.
BLOG MARKETING
A common question clients ask is “Do I Need A Blog?” and “How will this make money”? The key thing to understand is that a business blog is more of a marketing and communication tool than a sales tool. In fact, if it is to be used as a sales tool at all, it’s an indirect relationship at best. While your sidebar may contain links directly to your product, sales pages, or other main parts of your site, the purpose of your blog is to inform your customers about specific products. That doesn’t necessarily mean that starting a blog won’t affect your bottom line, and help to increase sales, in fact the opposite is true.
When talking about a benefit of your product while relying on a customer story about it can lead directly to one sale or several sales at a time.
Oftentimes, eCommerce bloggers link directly to their sales page, as the find that some blog readers are more resistant to sales copy, and yet, because bloggers build a trust with their readers, they are more willing to take their word for that a product is worth the quality and money. Rather, not using a blog directly as a sales tool just means that business owners are illuminating a valuable tool that converts web visitors into customers. Furthermore, blogs create an excellent method of reinforcing and improving a websites search engine rankings by providing well written copy which the search engines will index and rank on a regular basis.