Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practice is as simple as picking the right keywords.

We’ve all already been there and we all know that if it were that basic, we would all have number one search engine result rankings. Meta is important, but I’ve had top ranking sites without inputting any meta data.

If I just have a lot of links to my site from other sites, I’ll rank super high and get lots of traffic and make lots of money!

All links are weighted by importance. Links from directories earn you fewer points with search engines than a link from, for example, www.washingtonpost.com. A few really valuable links are worth more than many garbage links.

Links from an advertising banner may get you fewer points still. These aren’t totally invaluable if they are getting you pertinent traffic, and especially since traffic is calculated as part of your PageRank, but the link itself doesn’t earn you much.

Search Engine Optimization just isn’t for me. (Only if…)

The only viable reasons I can conclude for why search engine optimization isn’t for you include all of the following:

• You would rather pay higher costs for pay-per-click campaigns.
• You would rather by a Yellowpages ad.
• You have no competition for your product, service, or business name online.
• You don’t want more business.
• You don’t want business outside of your geographic target, localized to fifty square miles or whatever is a reasonable area for you or your staff to physically go hand out a business card.

Remember that people searching for you or your product or service are already searching for you, or your product and your service! Why not make it easier?

Better SEO Article 2 of 3

For part three, click here.

-jb

By definition, search engine optimization is the process of making a site optimized for search engines. While this may seem a little bit of a simplified definition, let’s think about concepts of design and the intended audience. Would you choose English as your language for a Chinese website? What font is the right font? What colors should be used? I bet legibility, grammar, and spelling count for something, agreed?

Let’s take the ideas behind the design principles and apply them to a non-human audience, Googlebot. Googlebot, for example as one of the most important web crawlers, isn’t going to look at your photo except to see what alternate text will be provided if the image doesn’t load, and perhaps the file name, file size, and file type, which may or may not give Google any index-able material you care about having indexed.

Googlebot cares about the structure of your page in a similar way that any one of us would read a book, starting with the ISBN, then the number of pages, then by looking at the table of contents, looking up the number of illustrations and where they come from if referenced, and memorizing where all chapter titles are placed on a page. That’s how you read a book, isn’t it? SEO, in simplest terms, is making sure that your website is easy reading for Googlebot to kick back and relax with.

Wikipedia.org:

“As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.”

At Jacob Tyler Creative Group, we’re also able to take a deep dive at how search engines look at your web host server setup, and how to get the most out of your configuration in terms of speed, user experience, and of course being easily found. Note: Currently, we are offering this service for LAMP systems only, but these systems constitute most of the web so, most likely, you’re in luck.

Note: Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) should not be confused with Search Engine Marketing (or SEM) which has the broader scope of bringing in traffic from external sources. To cite Wikipedia.org,

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings.

Most SEM strategies outside of SEO by nature are not concerned with either usability or with the ease of parsing through an electronic document. SEO, specifically, is not focused on external linking strategies, social networking, email campaigning, pay per click, and the many other types of online marketing. Questions like “Are you on Google Local business or not?” are irrelevant to SEO.

Stay tuned for our next Search Engine Optimization posting…

For part two, click here.

Better SEO Article 1 of 3

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By Les Kollegian, Creative Director

I would say on average, we meet with two-three potential new clients a week. The range of businesses can be from start-ups to fortune 500 companies. Frankly, there are benefits to both types of businesses. For start-ups, it is the ability to create a brand and message from the ground up. We love that work! To an artist, it’s truly a blank canvas that we can attack with any medium. As well, it’s the ability to create a partnership. I always tell our new clients that we have a vested interest in building their business. If they make money, they will keep us working and in return, give money back to us. Let’s be honest… I LOVE what I do but I am not in this for my health. I want to build my business just like everyone else so one day I can relax and not work ALL THE TIME.

When we meet with larger companies or established businesses that are looking for a new look, web design or brand strategy, it’s a different job. We have to work with what current brand equity they have and in most cases, make suggestions for changes that will enhance the brand and create new perceptions without a radical change in overall design.

Okay…so let me get to my point. I know you’re waiting. Everyone who walks through our front door comes in for a reason. They were either referred to us by another business that had a project completed successfully by Jacob Tyler OR they found us on Google due to our stellar search engine optimization and like our portfolio. The bottom line is they believe we do great work and we can help them. However, it never ceases to amaze me how many of the executives and entrepreneurs I meet want an award winning campaign as quickly as possible (i.e., tomorrow) on an exceptionally tight budget. It doesn’t work like that. Both start-up businesses and large companies are culprits of this practice. Thus I always tell them… Fast, Good, Cheap: Pick Two. I am not trying to be arrogant when I say this and I ask them to turn it around as if I was their client. For example, if my client was a doctor and I needed surgery to save my life ASAP, would I ask him for a discount? Okay…that may be a little extraordinary of an example, but let’s make it easier to understand. If I ask someone for a service like installing new countertops and appliances in my kitchen that I need in time for an event that requires extra work and overtime, why would I get a discount? It’s my house so of course it has to be an excellent job and I am requesting that it be done fast, so it would be pushing the envelope to ask for it cheap… right?

I’ll sum this up as I think I am starting to babble and vent a little too much here. Here goes:

If your job needs to be done quickly and in a fashion that will impress whoever will be viewing the result, it will not be inexpensive (or cheap). We love to work quickly and create award winning projects, that’s for sure but we can’t give discounts in this situation.

If your job needs to be done inexpensively and very fast, there is a good chance it will not be as good as you may want as we won’t be able to put the research and resources into it to make it as successful as possible. Frankly, we only do this for “quick and dirty” projects to show proof of concept.

If your job needs to be an award winner on a tight budget, it’s not going to get done fast. Oh, we’ll get it done and it will be great, but we’ll have to do it on OUR time since our resources may be going to other projects with different priorities.

No project is too big or too small for our firm. We take on every task as if it was our most important project. When you work with us, think of how you would charge YOUR clients or customers and how you would want to be treated during any transaction.

In the simplest way possible, SEM and SEO are tools which website creators, especially those who are promoting and selling a certain service or product, use in order to gain a lot of exposure and better ranking for their website. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the simplicity ends there.

To make it a tad bit complex, SEM and SEO are not the same. As suggested by the names, SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, deals more with how a website is marketed to gain exposure in the different search engines available on the internet, while SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, deals with how the web creators develop and re-develop the content, quality and structure of their entire websites so that whenever an internet user types in a particular word in the search tab, their websites have a better chance of appearing on the first few search engine results pages (SERPS).

Now, to make it even more complex, although the functions of SEM and SEO seem different, they are more effective when used together. Since the main function of SEM is to gain more exposure for a website, the more common means for attraction are online advertisements, blogs, internet articles, partner and sponsored websites, and anything that can catch the eye of the internet user. SEM also makes use of PPC (pay-per-click) and paid inclusion to further push a website’s visibility. Lastly, it is also an important process in SEM to submit the name and URL of a website to different search engines and web directories if only to inform them of the website’s existence. All this is carried out to ensure the popularity of a website.

So how does SEO come together with SEM? Well, despite having all the advertisements provided by SEM, it is truly the SEO that allows the internet user to easily and conveniently find what he is looking for. Since the function of SEO is to gain a better ranking in the SERPS, the web creator has to constantly optimize his website in order to cater to the needs of the internet user and to make it easier for spiders or web crawlers to judge whether the website’s content is relevant to the word/s being searched. Optimization is not a simple and easy task. It involves having to restructure the website regularly (by editing the html code and meta tags, changing content, reorganizing the site map, developing an easier navigational structure, etc.) so as to adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the internet user. Still, when done properly, not only does SEO help a website become more useful and therefore, more often visited by the internet user, it also helps gain more exposure since it increases the website’s chances of gaining a better rank in the SERPS.

Both SEM and SEO success rely heavily on the words or context which Internet users type in whenever they search for something on the internet. Take PPC under SEM, for example. PPC is an ad that is triggered by a particular word or context used by an internet user. Once a particular word or context is searched, a corresponding PPC ad for a website comes out. SEO works in the same way. The web creator inputs a particular Meta tag (or keyword) in his html that he believes many internet users will use when searching for information, information which the web creator’s website may contain.

Although all of these processes involving SEM and SEO are tedious and time-consuming, it all boils down to knowing and serving the target audience. A web creator must be discerning enough to know what the internet users need and want, and at the same time he must have the real passion to inform and provide the internet users with the right service and product.

Search Engine Optimization San Diego