What exactly is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?

If you want a website for a business, it needs to help generate revenue to justify the investment, or you end up wasting your money.  There are several strategies to drive traffic to your website:

1. search engine optimization
2. pay per click advertising
3. email marketing
4. banner advertising
5. social media
6. traditional advertising
7. press releases

All of these strategies can work; yet search engine optimization can be one of the most powerful.

The primay Internet search engines are Google, Yahoo, and Bing.  Between them, they have over 95% of the search engine market.  If your website is listed on page 1 for certain key phrases, the search engines can generate hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.  They key is to get listed near the top of page 1 for your key phrases.  Due to the volume of websites on the internet, a searcher might get 10,000 or even 10 million results under those search terms. On average, most web users do NOT get past the first TWO pages of search results. So, unless your web site shows up in the first few pages of a search on key words related to your business, very few people will find your website, no matter how cool it looks. The way to get your website in the first few pages is through search engine optimization.

The search engines use algorithms to decide who gets listed on page 1.  The exact recipe they use is carefully guarded, but through their publicly suggested strategies as well as experimentation, we have figured out what it takes to get listed.

Keyword Research for SEO

The first step is to determine what key words will help your business.   Unless your business is already a nationally known company (like Ben and Jerry’s or Baskin Robbins), the potential customer will not search on your company name. What they will do is search by product or service categories. For example, if you want to find an ice cream store near Huntington, WV, a web user might type “ice cream, west virginia” in a search engine, and see what shows up. However,  just because you CAN get listed on Page 1 for a phrase does NOT mean you should bother.  Some phrases are searched 1 million times per months, others are searched less than 10 times per month.  If you go after a phrase that has too FEW searches, it is like putting a billboard on a rural dirt road; no one will see it.  On the other extreme, if you go after a phrase that gets 1 million searches per month, its like advertising on the Super Bowl…great exposure but VERY expensive.

NeoNexus uses several keyword analysis tools to analyze your website, your prospects, and your competition, and determine which keywords are worth getting optimized. In some cases, we recommend an Adwords campaign to collect keyword research quicker prior to starting a search engine optimization campaign.

Content (Copywriting)

The strategies listed below (On-Site and Link Building) are important parts of any SEO campaign.  However, one of the often overlooked (and now most important) strategies is to add unique content.  Without good text that is also original, the other strategies can’t do their job.

NeoNexus has copywriters that are also trained in search engine optimization, so we write quality content that is fun to read AND helps with your SEO.

On-Site Optimization

Once your keyword targets are selected, then the strategies are implemented.  One of the strategies in on-site optimization.  This consists of making changes to the website pages to make them more search engine friendly.  Some of the techniques include:

• optimizing code so that errors are fixed
• speeding up load time
• rewriting text and H tags so they include the target key phrases
• optimizing page titles, alt tags, and meta descriptions (meta keywords are almost irrelevant now)

In local markets (like auto repair) where your competition is limited, OR niche phrases that don’t have a lot of on-line competition, your on-site optimization can be enough to get you to page 1.  However, it many cases, it is NOT enough.

Link Building

Link building is the process of getting OTHER websites to link to your website.  This is a big part of the search engine algorithm.  If you need to get high in the search engines for competitive key phrases, then link building is mandatory.

NeoNexus generates links a variety of ways.  These include:

• blogging
• forum link building
• directory submission
• press release submission
• Squidoo Lens creation service
• article submission
• social bookmarking

All of these strategies have their place, depending on the project specific needs.  NeoNexus uses a mixture to achieve your goals.  We also update our link building strategy constantly to make sure that any “bad links” are avoided.

We also use a mixture of quality and quantity for link building.  For example, one link from Microsoft’s website (that gets over a million visitors per month) could be worth 1000 links from low quality websites, so we use a mixture to achieve our clients goals.

Whether you need 100 links or 20,000 links, we can help.

Why not do it yourself?

Google is the major player in the search engine world. Over 50% of all searches are done on Google. That means that all other search engines COMBINED don’t get used as much as Google. How did they achieve this position? Simply stated, it was key word relevancy. Google’s goal is to get a web searcher the exact information they need when they do a search. Google actively monitors the web for designers that use tricks to try to get to the top of the search engines, and adjusts their search robots to compensate. And of course, they guard their search engine logic as close as the recipe for making Coca-Cola. What this means to you is that the methods of implementing SEO are constantly evolving, and web design companies who don’t stay extremely current on SEO techniques are wasting your time. In fact, in some cases, what worked before will actually hurt you now.

There are over 100,000 websites PER DAY being added to the internet. Do you want to

1. just throw your website out there and hope someone finds it?
2. go SEO do-it-yourself and hope you avoid the blacklisting strategies?
3. or do you want to take steps that are guaranteed to drive customers to your website?

Let NeoNexus be your choice for website search engine optimization.