Articles



Search Engine Optimization – What to Expect

By Keli Etscorn, keli@etscorn.com, ©2010 Keli Etscorn

When it comes to using search engines to find information on the Web, most Internet users don't look beyond the first several pages of results.

Because of this,
It’s crucial that your site show up on the
first page of Google!

This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in.

SEO is not an exact science now, nor will it ever be. Good ranking does not happen overnight; it takes time, patience, and commitment from both the SEO professional and the client. Once a site achieves a desired ranking, you must continue to monitor the site in several different ways. It’s just too competitive now days to just optimize a site and leave it – there’s a bit more work involved to stay ahead and stay on top.

So what can you expect from SEO?

How does it work?

Here are some common questions, misconceptions, and myths about the SEO world, as well as an explanation of some popular practices.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Defined
Search engine optimization is the process of creating Web sites with unique content that abide by the rules of the search engine. The end goal of SEO is to increase your visibility on the Internet as well as increase your targeted traffic to your Web site via the search engines. In other words: SEO takes aim at improving a Web page's visibility in the search engines. This makes SEO a vital piece of a successful online marketing strategy.

Each Search Engine uses a unique "algorithm," the set of rules that govern the way a Web page is ranked and viewed by the search engine. A well optimized site takes into consideration all of the necessary elements a site needs in order to be "search engine friendly" while following the rules of those said algorithms. In our company, I evaluate and implement approximately 100 different elements and techniques when optimizing a Web site. The techniques and practices used change on almost a daily basis. It’s important to go with an optimization firm that has their finger on the pulse of this exciting industry.

Basically, good optimization is achieved by following the search engine rules, utilizing researched keyword phrases properly, avoiding spammy techniques, having well constructed meta tags, offering great content (and PLENTY of it), presenting a user-friendly interface, site interlinking and link popularity.

The Basics

Keyword Phrases
As an SEO professional, the most important part of what I do is keyword research. It’s the starting point of ALL my SEO projects and it naturally guides the SEO project, addressing the most important parts that fall from the research such as a site plan (addressing filename, page name and navigation), copywriting assignment and keyword phrase assignment.

Keyword phrases must be thoroughly researched, analyzed, and tested. Why optimize a Web page for a keyword phrase that no human types in? A good SEO professional should provide a list of keyword phrases pertaining to your service and/or business that are not too competitive while still being popular enough to drive targeted traffic to your site. The "competitiveness" of the selected keyword phrases can help to dictate the amount of time necessary to obtain desirable search engine rankings.

How Long Does it Take to Achieve Good Ranking?
Keep in mind that simply submitting your Web site to the free search engines and directories provides no guarantee that you will be indexed; much less achieve a high ranking. A site must be optimized and abide by all search engine rules before it is assigned ranking consideration.

If your site has existed for at least a year (meaning that it’s been indexed *seen* by Google) then you can expect between 3 to 6 months to achieve good rankings in the popular search engines (9-12 months for a brand new site). Web sites with low link popularity and no history in Google can expect to reach their ranking goals in at least 6 to 12 months. Please keep in mind that SEO is NOT cookbook and because of this it’s hard to give exact numbers and timelines. We’ve seen many times a client’s site rank in as little as a month’s time – that is not unusual.

Timelines varies from site to site. The complexity of the SEO strategy depends on the competitiveness of the keyword phrases, the amount of redesign the Web site needs, SEO copywriting, architecture restructure, history of the site, and many other factors. We will discuss these factors and let you know what to expect when it comes to achieving good ranking in the search engines.

How is Good Ranking Obtained?
The most important factor is time. SEO is a patience game. It’s never immediate.

Other factors include a collection of good practices/techniques; Great home page copy, high link popularity (with one way, incoming links being the most desirable type of link), the use of well researched keyword phrases in proper areas of your Web site and other techniques that have proven to work over the 13 years since I’ve been an SEO professional.

A search engine spider (or crawler) looks for two things: 1) text and 2) text links. Spiders follow text links and look in your copy for reiterations of your keyword phrases. Make sure you have PLENTY of good copy on your homepage. ("Good" means good writing, of course, but also the smooth, logical inclusion of your keyword phrases in the copy.) I like to see at LEAST 250 words on the homepage of a client’s site. We have several seasoned SEO copywriters on staff to help our clients with their site copy. It really does make a difference!

The Myths

"We’ll submit your site to thousands of search engines!"
I regularly get this E-mail in my "admin" or "webmaster" accounts for most of the domains I manage and I bet you’ve seen it too. What are these 1000 search engines? Are humans actually using them? No. The following statistics show search engines that are actually on our radar:

The 4 largest search engines on the Web are:

  • 1. Google 72.25 %
  • 2. Yahoo 14.83 %
  • 3. Bing 8.92 %
  • 4. Ask 2.54 %

Dec 2009 / Source:
Experian® Hitwise®

These search engines above are where YOU want your Web site to be (namely Google as it has the lion’s share of the search market) and NOT “Freds-Cool-Search-Engine.com.” Listing your site in second-rate search engines – even 1000’s of them! - will probably generate nothing but spam and end up wasting your time. Concentrate on the search engines people use - THAT'S where your traffic will come from.

"Guaranteed #1 Ranking!"
This is just as popular a gimmick as the “we’ll submit your site to 1000’s of search engines” E-mail. No reputable SEO firm promises this. Why? We don’t own Google, Yahoo, or any other of the major search engines. I’d love to make this promise to my clients, but to do so would be highly unethical and untrue at best. Usually this claim involves picking some obscure keyword phrase that's easy to obtain good ranking with – that usually means it’s a phrase that is never actually searched on by humans! RUN away from SEO firms that make this type of promise.

Google has the following to say about firms that guarantee ranking #1:

“Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Google Sitemaps (Beta) program, and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.”

Do I resubmit my site every week?
If your site is already in a search engine, why resubmit it? It wastes bandwidth and time. Many services tout this as a feature to their program when it’s really not necessary at all; in fact, this practice is construed as spam by some search engines. Multiple submissions may result in your Web site getting permanently removed from a search engine.

The Practice

Organic SEO
Organic SEO (or “natural” SEO) is what I've practiced since 1997. It is based on common sense optimization that doesn’t utilize Pay-Per-Click (PPC) programs (buying traffic) or spammy techniques that can get you banned from ever ranking. Spammy techniques usually don’t keep your site ranked high for very long and that sends you right back to your SEO professional again. Do it right the first time.

Monitoring
In order to watch how your Web site is doing in the search engines, it should be monitored closely and regularly. Some clients don't realize the importance of monitoring until it's too late and they've lost a lot of unique targeted traffic.

Trends on what people search on change as well. This is especially noticeable around big holidays. Do you think people will be searching on “valentine’s gifts” in the summer? Not! Constant keyword research allows you to make changes and optimize your site for seasonal trends.

The biggest changes that your site will need are usually after the search engines undergo a big algorithm change, but consistent monitoring also allows you to tweak the site if need be. Most monitoring packages include incorporating the changes needed for your Web site to maintain good rankings.

When you're considering hiring an SEO professional, be sure to ask what kind of monitoring service is included. Some SEO professionals include 6 months of monitoring with your SEO services; others charge a monthly fee. And if you're not paying for monthly monitoring, and your site ranking drops, you'll usually pay a consulting fee (much higher!) to correct the problem.

What To Do If Your Search Engine Ranking Falls
Search engine rankings constantly fluctuate, mainly due to three factors:

  • There are literally thousands of new sites going live on the Internet every day;
  • People are becoming more and more aware of SEO; and
  • Algorithms constantly change to work around spamming practices and to provide more relevant results.

Google is not a static index!
it’s always changing

If you notice that your ranking falls drastically or drops out of the index completely, the first thing to remember is not to panic! The search engines are a very dynamic beast and will constantly change. Your listing may reappear in the same position - and it may not.  If your ranking doesn't come back after a few weeks of monitoring, it's possible that the search engine made a major change in the algorithm. Consult with your SEO professional at that point (although they’re probably already aware of the slip).

The worst mistake you can make during this time is to try and "chase the algorithm," making many frantic changes to your Web site. You’ll never know what's actually working and what isn’t. This is where patience comes in. After a major change, it's best to wait at least a month before analyzing and making changes to your site. A monthly monitoring service usually includes these changes for you.

After Optimization
After your site is optimized and live on the Internet you’ll want to have a strong back link program (like the one that is included in our optimization packages) in place. It’s simply imperative these days as one of the most important ongoing, off-page SEO tactics you can do at this time. Another important task would be form audits – these should be done on a monthly and quarterly basis along with a quarterly site analysis and a ranking report. Do you ever wonder how strong your keywords are a year later after optimization? Do they still perform as well? Are there any phrases we’re missing? We perform these audits – it’s imperative to keep up with current searching trends and it’s even more important that your site is using the *latest* keywords phrases.

Keeping it Fresh
When Google released a patent (April 2005) that stated how they “might” be evaluating Web sites, some very important points became apparent.

Nowadays, it’s pretty obvious that Google evaluates your sites at historical data. Metrics such as how long your domain has been registered for, how many years has it been registered for, how often do you make changes to your site (Google “likes” a site that is updated frequently, this tells Google there’s some importance to it), link inflation (did the number of back links drastically increase all at once? Drastically decline?) are some of the things Google evaluates when assigning ranking consideration to your site.

Wrap-up Checklist

  • Keep it fresh
  • Keep it unique
  • Keep it spam free
  • Keep it updated
  • Keep it error free
  • Use thoroughly researched keywords wisely
  • Use your head.

SEO Glossary

Algorithm
The set of rules each search engine follows to rank your site. Each search engine uses a unique algorithm that is constantly being updated and changed.

Back Links
Links from other Web sites to your Web site. This is also referred to as incoming links. Quality (linking to site related to the theme of your site) incoming links will help your Web site with its ranking in the search engines.

Keyword Phrases
Keyword phrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing Web sites for keyword phrases so that the sites rank highly in the search query results.

Link Popularity
Link popularity is the total number of Web sites that link to your site. It's best if the sites linking "to" and "from" you are related in theme to your site.

Paid Inclusion
Some directories will only consider placing your URL/Web address into their database if you pay them a fee. We don’t use any of these type services for our clients.

PPC
Pay Per Click. Paying for your traffic by bidding on search terms and keyword phrases. Bidding price is determined by popularity - generic keyword phrases cost more than precise, highly targeted keyword phases. Competitive keyword phrases drive lower amounts of traffic but result in a higher ROI (return on investment) and sales conversion.

ROI
Return on investment.

Search Engine Friendly
A user-friendly Web site that can be easily found in the search engines without violating any search engine policies, spamming or any other techniques frowned upon in the SEO industry.

SERP
Search Engine Results Page. This is the list of results that appear in a search engine from a keyword phrase query.

Spam
With respect to search engines, spam is defined as any technique used to give your Web site an unfair ranking advantage over other pages. If you employ tricks to obtain high ranking, it is probably spam and will not keep your site ranked high for long. Spam techniques also violate search engine terms-of-service (TOS) in most cases - and can get your site banned permanently.

Spider
Spiders are also known as a "robots" or "crawlers." These programs are used by search engines for indexing a Web site and gathering the content on Web pages within a Web site. Spiders crawl a Web site by following the links between Web pages. This is why it is essential that all the Web pages within your Web site be linked to each other.

About the Author

Keli Etscorn is a search engine optimization specialist who focuses on organic search engine tactics. Former founder of a fiber optic ISP, she now runs her own company, Bear Canyon Consulting, LLC . Keli has created nationally featured Web sites and Ecommerce sites since 1996. Her work is featured in publications such as PC Magazine, Parade Magazine, The New York Times, Hamptons Magazine, US Weekly and APC Currents magazine, just to name a few. She started concentrating on search engine optimization in 1999 and uses her master’s degree in mathematics to get her clients top rankings in the most popular search engines.

Her endeavors include starting and heading the SEO unit for one of the biggest attorney portals online (SonicSEO.com, the optimization branch of AttorneyLocate.com), including overseeing the optimization and design of over 2000 nationwide attorney and small business Web sites. Her biggest projects to date are daughter Sage and son Seven, both future UNIX system administrators.

Last update 1/29/2010