In a nutshell, search engine optimization (or SEO, for short) is the process of improving your ranking in search engines. While SEO might seem like some kind of magic, a major part of ranking well is really a matter of:
- Following technical best practices when building a website and populating your content. This might show up as things loading slowly, or your site not showing up in Google at all.
- Publishing good, quality content that will be interesting and/or useful to your visitors.
- Having a solid strategy for marketing your content.
Unfortunately, many websites lack one or more of these three things that are so important to SEO.
How we can help
Performing an SEO audit of your website will help to identify areas where we can begin to make improvements and help your overall search engine ranking. There are both internal and external factors that affect how your website performs in search engine listings. While we will make recommendations on both, we tend to focus more internally because we have more control over managing these things.
A quick note about the bad guys of SEO
If you’ve had a website long enough, you’ve gotten emails from companies that guarantee top placement in search engines. Run, don’t walk, from anyone that guarantees anything as far as search engine optimization goes. Typically, these companies can get your website ranking well…temporarily. However, these rankings are usually built on practices that are frowned upon by search engines and can ultimately get your website buried in results. Google’s algorithms will eventually figure this stuff out and you don’t want to be on the receiving end of penalties for trying to bend or break the rules. Remember, search engine optimization is a process of improving where you rank and there is no “one size fits all” or “silver bullet” solution to get you to the top tomorrow.
