Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Simply put, SEO is a process in which a website is designed (or redesigned) and restructured to rank highly on the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.
However, in reality, Search Engine Optimization is a lot more complex. It consists of:
- keyword popularity research
- making a website clear and easy to use
- market and competitive analysis
- suggestive and effective copywriting
- increasing external links to your website
- analyzing your visitor's behavior and measuring your website's success.
Successful SEO campaigns require a solid understanding of website technology and the search engines themselves, but search engine optimization is far from being a technical practice. A good SEO consultant should understand design methodologies, communications, your business, your market, and your customer. SEO is also a delicate balancing act between cost and benefit, between risk and reward.
The SEO Process
Just like companies, no two SEO campaigns are exactly alike. As such, TechMark Consulting will customize an SEO campaign to meet your specific needs.
However, we do employ many basic processes for most of our SEO clients and have listed below the step-by-step processes we find to be the most critical to help you increase your web business.
Website Review
We prepare a simple but important analysis of your current website and your web server technology, how it is designed, coded, and structured. This analysis serves as a baseline report to be used during the pre-client process and let you know if there are any major hurdles to overcome before beginning an SEO Campaign. We review the report with you and your personnel (typically your marketing team and web managers).
Initial Consultation
A face-to-face meeting or conference call will allow us to help you determine the specific goals of your website, define your target market, and set up measurable goals that will define the success of an SEO campaign. A list of competitors and an initial list of target keywords will be discussed.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the most critical phase. If you don't target the right keywords, your campaign will not target the right customer or get the right response. With your approval, we will fine tune your list of keywords, relying on our own techniques and customized keyword research software to determine the most relevant and effective keywords for your organization. We strive to dig up keywords that are used most often but have less competition.
Site Structure and Architecture Analysis
A deeper analysis of your site's architecture and design structure is performed. We will suggest changes to anything that may prevent search engines from indexing the pages on your website or otherwise hurt your rankings. Items include navigation, site maps, folder and naming conventions, duplicate content issues.
Web Copy Analysis
After reviewing the site, we may recommend copy changes to your web pages to more effectively target your most powerful keywords. A "picture may be worth a thousand words," but on the Internet copy is king. Written content is what sells.
If desired, we can edit existing pages or write new pages. Not only do we optimize your copy for targeted keywords, we also make sure to write appealing and suggestive copy designed to prompt your web visitors to take action.
Code and Design Changes
Unique code and design changes are made to ensure your targeted keywords are used effectively in your image ALT tags, META tags, TITLE tags, etc. Special care is provided to ensure your keywords are targeted for each page and not just repeated generically throughout your site.
Website Submission
After your site is tested and ready to go, we will use a combination of software and manual submission techniques to submit your website and individual pages to over 50 search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com.
Analysis and Reporting
Using advanced web analytics, your website traffic and success goals (conversion statistics) can be measured. Once the search engines have crawled and indexed your site, you will begin to see results. Visits to your site and visitor activity can be tracked. Reports can show you a wealth of information and provide you statistics that will illustrate your return on investment. Our expert web analysts can then educate you to help you understand the correlation between certain statistics and your internet marketing results. Analytics provides insight into your visitors demographics and behavior and your website's performance and can be used to
Ongoing SEO Maintenance - Monthly Service
Successful search engine optimization requires constant tracking, maintenance, and a proactive approach to marketing. For an SEO campaign to be successful, we recommend and provide the following additional monthly services.
Web Analytics
If we have access to your server logs, or if you allow us to provide web analytics for you with our system, you will receive a variety of monthly reports designed to track and analyze some of the following metrics: increases in traffic, keywords used to find your website, geographic location, which keywords are most successful at converting visitors into buyers (or taking some other desirable action), your most popular content, what search engines and sites are referring traffic to your website, and more.
The web analytics reports come with a one hour consultation with a search marketing and web analysis expert. Customized reports are available.
Search Engine Rankings Tracking
For each of your targeted keywords, we will provide a monthly report that shows how well each keyword ranks on the four major search engines - Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com. This report will also track your competition on each keyword and show you what pages are visible in the search engines. This report will be analyzed over time to ensure that your site is improving or maintaining its search engine rankings. When search engines change their algorithms, or if one of your key pages drops significantly in rank, we will be able to spot this quickly and provide corrective action.
Keyword Research
The web analytics report and search engine rankings report will help track keyword popularity and the effectiveness of your target keywords. Over time, new keywords will be discovered, new keywords will be created in the marketplace, and many of your existing keywords may increase or decrease in popularity. Continual research of your keywords and target market can help you stay one step ahead of the competition
and make sure your site maintains a high rank in the search engines.
Additional Internet Marketing and Search Marketing Services
Natural SEO (organic search engine optimization) can be complemented by all of the following services:
- Link Building
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising
- Copywriting - white papers, articles, and content creation or revisions to existing website
- Public Relations (PR)
- E-Mail Campaigns and E-Mail Newsletters
- Partner and Affiliate Program Strategies
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