Proven Search Optimization

SEO Services Should Be Questioned

Anyone who has a business website wants to ensure that there website is found easily in Google. A lot of companies promise good SEO results if you pay them a substantial fee each month for their optimization services. The reality is, you don’t need to pay lots of money for SEO. Trust me when I say that most of the “SEO” companies provide little, if any, benefit, many use “black-hat” SEO methods which can get your website banned, and almost all provide little documentation on their optimization methods or where the time was spent each month for which you are charged. So please, be careful where you spend your SEO dollars.

For most websites with a good visual layout, a reasonable amount of text, optimized images and accessible navigation only a few things need to be done to achieve and maintain a good SEO ranking.

1. Define what keywords and phrases you are targeting for. This can be done by searching top ranked competition websites, and by using Google’s Keyword Planner Tool.
2. Ensure that the primary keywords are in place on your primary web pages, specifically the page title/s, description metatag, home page (above the fold), navigation, and heading tags.
3. Submit the completed website to the primary search engines, directories, and review websites

That’s it … at least for most websites.

The industries with the most competition will be the hardest to rank well in, which is why I always recommend noting the region of where services are provided. If you primarily provide services to the Sacramento area then “Sacramento” should be listed in your home page title (if not all of them), and Sacramento should be in the text copy of your home page. Regional specificity will ensure that your website is listed in local results instead of national or worldwide listings.

Once your website is optimized as noted above, and has been submitted in the “free” listings for all the top ranked engines and directories, all that is needed is to track the website using Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools. Analytics will let you know what’s working, and what can be improved upon, and Webmaster Tools will let you submit a sitemap, and tell you if there are broken links, who’s linking to you, etc.

For the sake of illustration I have included 12 of my client listings below. Each listing is “organic” which simply means that the search result listing/s are not a “Google Ad” (which are always placed above the organic listings). As for the “search query”, for each I typed in the phrase that would most commonly be used to find this type of business. It is important to note that how words are search for (the word placement), as well as the specific words chosen will provide different results. As an example – my first illustration is for Gilchrist Golf Cars. Gilchrist has been client of mine for a long time so he comes up for the first three search results for his primary targeted service which is “golf car sales”. His business is in Rocklin, but I chose “Sacramento” since we want to target the larger city, not people just in Rocklin. If I search “Golf Car Sales Rocklin” Gilchrist still comes up #1 and #2, which was expected since he ranked #1 in Sacramento which is a bigger market. If I type in just “Golf Car Sales” he is ranked #3 since Google will now factor in “ALL” golf car sales websites; the first result is from Colorado, the second is the “clubcar” manufacturer website. Clearly Gilchrist’s ranking is exceptional since it is listed highly even when a region is not applied.

It is important to understand that directory listings, government websites, and large institutions (such as HMO’s) will almost always be ranked higher than a private business. The reason is that Google ranks a website based upon its “authority” rating (reputation). A business with lots of web pages, lots of traffic, that has been online a long time will do better than a new business even if this new business has been optimized better for SEO. Government websites are provided a higher authority rating than commercial websites, and directory/review websites have umpteen pages, cross-industry listings, and accordingly lots of search traffic so are very hard to rank above. I note this since my client websites (those who follow my SEO suggestions) all rank very well, though the one’s that rank the highest will be those who have been online the longest, and who have the most pages which incorporate their targeted keywords.

On a final note, most of our clients come to me with a very low website SEO ranking, or no ranking at all; the fact that these website’s are now listed on the first page of Google search results is the “proof” that my SEO methods work.

A few of the “Google First Page” clients of E. Curtis Designs.