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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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

In terms of commerce, San Diego is a city that is one of the most diverse and active in the U.S., this in spite of it being located in a country with some of the largest business centers in the world. It is particularly strong in the areas of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and there are many large companies of each type in the city.

As you can imagine, the competition between these companies is positively fierce. In order to remain competitive, there is a growing need to come up with new and more effective avenues of marketing, in addition to the more traditional methods of print, radio and television ads.

While these advertising methods have worked well in the past, the fast changing times necessitate a more modern and far reaching approach. More and more, the industry is seeing marketing approaches that focus heavily on Internet marketing, and advertising budgets have been adjusted to reflect this emerging trend. Clearly, what is needed is for San Diego based companies to create marketing plans that allow their websites to be easily found and accessed by all their potential customers.

Taking as an example the two industries we previously mentioned-biotechnology and pharmaceuticals-a quick search on any of the major Internet search engines will call up thousands upon thousands of pages or “hits”. This only serves to emphasize the important role that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can play in the growth of San Diego businesses.

In order to best utilize SEO in the service of your company, it may be useful to know how exactly it works. Quite simply, search engine spiders trawl through the thousands of web sites in order to find out what the specific purpose of each individual web site is, and upon determining that, these spiders add them to the search engine’s index. The search engines then choose the web sites with the most relevant and trustworthy content to add to their search engine results pages or SERPs.

This is the now widely recognizable listing that shows up when a user types a particular keyword phrase in the search engine’s “search” box. Web site owners who wish to draw in a healthy amount of traffic should make sure that their sites not only have a good amount of relevant keywords and keyword phrases, they must also know how to use them in the most effective and efficient way possible. One of the ways that they can do these things is by becoming thoroughly acquainted with the finer points of SEO.

Of course running a business is often a full time endeavor, and the various day to day tasks that such a position entails means there is very little-if any-time left for anything else. This is where SEO consultants come in. By hiring a suitably qualified consultant, owners of San Diego businesses can reap the benefits that SEO can impart to their companies without having to bother with the details themselves. A good consultant can help make sure that your business’s web site effectively utilizes important phrases and thereby make your web site’s purpose clear to search engines. The end result is that your web sites are more likely to receive favorable rankings in SERPs.

But that is only one half of the equation. Effective SEO also helps your business’s web site establish a “good relationship” with all the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. You will find out early on that trust is everything as far as these search engines are concerned, and building a reputation for relevance and good content will help your business immeasurably.

One of the primary means by which search engines establish a trust rating for your business’s web site is by keeping track of how it is perceived by other web sites. Search engine “bots” or specialized web site programs naturally have a more difficult time deciphering the quality of any particular web site, including your own.

Because of this, human input is still one of the most useful means by which spiders gauge a web site’s content, the idea being that if any actual human user links to your business’s web site, he or she must feel that it is worth linking to. With this in mind, SEO works on creating a link building strategy that will help your website gain the trust of hopefully all the major search engines.

A reputable company will have a team of highly experienced and thoroughly knowledgeable SEO professionals, along with all of the resources that will help your web site achieve the high search engine rankings that you need. Because it is important to use only ethical methods in the pursuit of these goals, a good company will closely conform to the guidelines that have been set by most major search engines.