70% of people use search engines to find relevant websites. Without a search engine bringing these visitors, your website is virtually invisible on the Internet. Search engines are like roadways that bring the traffic past your front door. If you build your website without an SEO strategy, it is like building in the middle of a forest with no roads. It will exist but no one will know it is there.

 

 

 

Information is the key to success

The search engine's most important customers are the people doing the searching not the website owners. The owners ultimate goal is to provide customers with the most relevant information possible. If your website is deemed to be strongly relevant to a person's search, then your website will be high on that search list. If your website is not as relevant, then it is buried so far down the list, it might as well be invisible. Relevant information is the key. 

 

 

 

Many websites mistakenly hide content

They use software robots called 'spiders' which literally roam the Internet and index (download and categorize) the content on every website they find. There are two factors required for this process to happen. 

1. Search engines need to be able to see your website's content. The content on many websites is mistakenly hidden from these spiders, due to the way they are designed. 
2. Search engines analyze the validity of the content and discard useless content that may disappoint their searching customers.

So if a person was searching for a Financial Advisor in Toronto and there was a website that contained these kewords Toronto, financial, and advisor  a hundred times on one page but there was no other valid content, this website would be considered spam and would be ignored. Another website could be at the top of the search engine list and only have these keywords five times on any given page. What is the difference. The second website has these keywords in proper sentences, page titles, downloadable files, bullet points, etc. 

  

 

 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the secret, but it is not a complete mystery. Although the search engine companies will not divulge the specific methods it uses to rank websites, they do offer lots of suggestions of what they look for. When you first build a website it is virtually hidden among a forest of websites. When you incorporate SEO strategies, the search engines will soon build a road to your front door. If you continue to use effective SEO strategies, it is like having a large flashing neon sign. This whole process may take several months but it is worth it.

 

 

 

When a search engine finds relevant valid content on your website it classifies this content into keywords. Some words such as 'the','as', and 'like' are largely discarded. The remaining text is considered keywords if being used properly and given a weighting (quality value) based on how well it is being used. More weight is given to words that are also found in titles, bullets, links, page headers, file names, etc. 

When someone goes to a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, or others and types in their search words, the following happens.

• The search engines go through their vast indexes to find websites containing these keywords. 
• The list of websites containing these keywords (often in the hundreds of thousands) are then sorted based on the weighting of how each keyword was used on each website. 
• Websites with a higher weighting value of keywords appear before those with a lower weighting value.

 Amazing how fast it can do this for the whole world!

 

Search engines can read most text unless it is contained in a photo, javascript programming code, or Flash. Many drop down menus use javascript or Flash which can therefore be a major problem. The other issue many people do not realize hurts their visibility to the search engines, is when text is actually part of a graphic or photo. An example of this is in the text box below.

 

 

 

By understanding how your target market uses keywords

People are discovering that the more keywords they type into the search engines, the more defined their search will be. 

For example, if they wanted to buy water plants for their pond and type just the word water into Google, they would get 3,230,000,000 billion websites (as of January 2012). Topics would range from oceans to paddle boats to molecules. People are now much more knowledgeable about search engines and will use more defining keywords such as pond water plants, to refine this list. If this doesn't give them the best results they may also add double quotes around these words, so"pond water plants" would shorten their results even more. If your website was created to sell water plants for ponds but you rarely used the word pond in your content, you may never be seen by prospective buyers.

 

49% of people now include a local city name to find relevant websites. So if they added the city name pond water plants Toronto, this list dwindles down much more. Knowing the keywords your target market is using and using these words in the best combination, will bring that search traffic to your front door.

 

 

 

We incorporate SEO strategies into every website we design. We will show you keyword tools you can use whenever you update your content or we can do this for you.  We can also assist you with finding popular words being search on the Internet for the past 12 months which relate to your products or services. By using these keywords in the proper quantity and quality throughout your website, you will increase your chances of the right people finding your website. 

Just having keywords throughout your website is not the only requirement to draw attention. You must also use them in ways the search engines will find them more valuable. We can show you how. With an Ultimate Website, we make it easy to own a more visible and attractive website for both the search engines and your target market.