Search Engine Optimization (SEO) leverages search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN’s Bing to obtain visibility and highly qualified traffic in the most cost-effective manner.
While most web sites reside passively on the Internet, a growing number of businesses (large and small) have been extremely successful at dynamically leveraging their sites to produce meaningful results and achieve specific business and marketing objectives.
What makes these individuals so successful at attracting customers online? What is it about their sites and their strategy that separate them from their competition? What are they doing right?
The most successful SEO strategies target two entirely different audiences: (1) The Customer and (2) The Search Engines!
Most websites neglect to consider the search engines and thus, their website obtains minimal visibility. That means potential customers will not find you. To optimize your website properly from a search engine’s perspective your site needs to excel in three critical areas.
Code refers to the search engines’ ability to access and index your web pages. The indexability of your site has a direct impact on your website’s overall search engine rankings. If the search engines can not read your code or index your site, then for all intents and purposes, your website simply does not exist.
Content is all about the search engines’ evaluation of the topic or subject of your web page. The importance of a targeted “keyphrase strategy” based on the most appropriate terminology used by your target audience is paramount. The proper integration of keyphrases into your website is critical and can be the difference between success or falling short.
Connections means keeping good company and is the search engines’ determination of your site’s credibility based on the number, type and quality of other sites pointing to it. In a competitive marketplace, without “authority” your website has little chance of obtaining significant visibility and attracting the quality and volume of potential clients you seek.
It is the continual management of these three key areas along with meaningful measurement and analysis that make for an effective SEO strategy. Optimizing a website properly requires a comprehensive knowledge of how search engines work and the ability to act quickly in an ever-changing landscape.
Bardorf Legal Marketing is a Massachusetts Internet marketing and advertising firm working with lawyers and law firms on enhancing their online effectiveness in the areas of SEO, paid search, social media, affiliate marketing, blog and website development, and targeted local search marketing campaigns.
