Some frequesntly asked questions relating to search engine optimization. If you do not find your answer listed, please contact us and we will be glad to answer your questions. Or simply submit a FREE Website Evaluation and we will review your current marketing and provide you with a game plan on how to achieve the best possible search engine rankings.

1 - What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization starts by researching the search terms (or keywords) that describe your services and/or products in the exact form that visitors use to find your website. When a webpage is submitted, that search engine sends out a 'spider' to determine a mathematical value for the keywords appearing on your webpage. The webpage then exists in the search engine database to be displayed based upon the search term the visitor uses. In other words, search engine optimization makes your web page search engine friendly so when a web searcher uses the keywords that you've planned for your page, that page shows up on top of the search engine results list.

2 - Why do my web pages need to be optimized?

Search engines display search results by matching the exact search term (keyword) that a web user types in with webpages that exist in their database. This means that you can only rank for terms that actually exist on your webpage. Through search engine optimization we calculate the specific percentage of keywords necessary to rank the webpage successfully. We also utilize other techniques that will increase the ranking of a webpage.

Which keywords you use are VERY important. If the keywords used on your webpage are not precisely what is being used in a search, you may have a #1 keyword ranking but it could be for a keyword that no one actually uses. Also, if your content does not match what the web-user is searching for they may not be happy with what your web page has to offer. Included in our service is specific research to determine the keywords that describes both your website and the search terms that web-users actually search with. That means that "targeted" web-users will be driven to your website which leads to a higher sales conversion rate.

3 - If everyone optimizes, what can I gain?

Everyone doesn't! Only 40% of web designers actually use an optimization strategy of some sort. Out of that 40%, only 10% use correct optimization strategies. Choosing and implementing the correct keywords instantly jumps you ahead of 94% of the web pages on the Internet.

You will gain specific traffic to your website. Imagine a used car lot with millions of cars parked on it. The cars with a greater chance of being sold are parked on the edge of the lot facing the road not in the back of the lot. Your $20,000 state of the art website will be worthless without visitors and the opportunity for sales. With search engine optimization we are researching which car characteristics the passers-by are looking for and change the appearance of the car to fit the need.

5 - Do I need to optimize every page?

Yes, you should because search engines spider your entire website. Every page on your website is a potential entry to your website from the search engines. Search engine spiders react well to websites that feature content constructed by a specific theme for the website. Each page then can target a specific keyword relating to that theme. This increases the likelihood that each page will rank successfully for the targeted keywords. The more pages that are optimized, the more opportunity to gather additional web traffic.

6 - Can my web design hurt search engine rankings?

• Flash Frames
• Active Server Pages (ASP)
• Cold Fusion programming
• Websites with no inside pages
• Heavy graphics that lengthen download time

If your site does utilize any of the above formats here are some general tactics we use to give our clients the ability to rank.

1. Flash - Flash is a file that loads from a stationary HTML page. The stationary HTML page should be optimized. The search engines do not read Flash or graphics and the engines will not read any text embedded in this software. If the entire site is in Flash, the search engine will not be able to detect inside pages, which destroys rankings.

To correct the problem, place hypertext links at the bottom of about 6-7 stationary HTML pages that link to each other and back to the homepage. This network of links will help the search engines detect inside pages. If you do not want these pages being seen by the physical visitor, place your Flash file on each of these pages. The Flash file will load and be seen when any of these pages rank and are clicked on by the visitor.

2. Frames - Frames act as a barrier between your optimized text and the search engine spiders. Engines cannot effectively crawl and index your site if frames are utilized.

Place your Meta tags in the frames portion at the top of your programming and also in the no frames portion. Make sure there is text in the no frames programming along with invisible links to stationary HTML pages. If the engines cannot read all of the pages they can identify the HTML pages and index from those. This results in making your site look like a no frames site to the engines. Please note that sites targeting very general, competitive terms will have extreme difficulty. Regional sites on the other hand, that utilize frames, benefit well from this form of optimization.

3. Active Server Pages (ASP) and Cold Fusion Sites (CFM )- are dynamically generated so they do not have the same impact on the search engines as static HTML pages.

We strongly recommend reprogramming these pages as HTML. This can be done while being hosted on a Windows NT server. If this is not an option, take the homepage, reprogram it to a stationary index.html page and add hidden HTML pages.

4. Cold Fusion - Cold Fusion is an HTML editor, which fuses the entire site together and makes it difficult for search engines to make changes or index inside pages. Cold Fusion creates problems for the crawlers when the pages have a .cfm extension instead of .html or .htm. Try to stay away from Cold Fusion extensions. Keep it .html simple.

5. Heavy Graphics - Search engine spiders will not wait for graphics with a large file size to load. The search engines spiders will conserve resources by aborting their indexing when long delays are encountered. This can include heavy graphics and large external scripting. Be sure that your website loads fast to insure the best possible indexing.