Effective
Search Engine Optimization
When
you want to buy something, let's say widgets, online to get the best value,
where do you go to look for it? Do you open the telephone book and look
for a local online shop who might carry the product, or do you open your
web browser, go to your favorite search engine and enter the product name
in the search field? That's the way most people use the internet, and
whether you are selling widgets or giving away information, if your web
site is listed too far down in the search results, no one will ever notice
that you are selling widgets, providing a valuable service or offering
free expert info.
This is exactly
what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about. Symbiotic Design™
is a web design studio that utilizes standards and practices which are
both search engine friendly as well as human user friendly. Our techniques
are sound and have gotten us number one and top ranked listings for many
of the sites we have worked on using advanced SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Symbiotic
Design™
is always redesigning it's site with updates to address the constantly
changing priorities of Search Engines. Because SEO techniques change so
radically after a very short time, it is important to us to also optimize
our site's pages. We recomend that you do the same.
However,
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is extremely time-consuming work. Should
you be interested in optimizing your own website (as we do recomend),
we actually encourage you to do this yourself. We simply don't get paid
enough when we do other people's sites, and believe us, we have to charge
a small fortune in order to deliver top rankings in the major search engines.
Our SEO experts
are consistently getting top rankings for our clientele. Our in-house
expert is our secret weapon and you will have to contact us if you would
like to contract our resident expert's services. Doug Peters also understands
the balance of designing for humans and designing for search engine robots,
as well as understanding brand integrity.
As an example
of our work, our logo design page should come up first when searching
for "graphic
logo design, Sioux Falls" in the Google listings. This
was done not as a separate optimization project, but as a result of the
intended design. Therefore, please consider that any SEO work is best
done as a part of the original design and development of a site and not
as an afterthought.
It is unfortunate
that most web design studios consider Search Engine Optimization a secondary
process and thus do not offer thier clientele a complete web presence
solution. Since Symbiotic
Design™
is a complete website design studio, we offer SEO as a part of every website
or web page that we produce. Whats more is that we offer balanced solutions
that do not
We can give
you many more details and examples of our SEO expertise in person or over
the phone. However, because SEO techniques change so rapidly, we cannot
divulge further information without updating this page every week. Therefore,
we do require contact through e-mail, phone or personal interview to discuss
the art of professional Search Engine Optimization further and in more
detail.
The alternate
is to do the job yourself. We are even more than willing to help you in
that venture. If you are interested, please visit our Promotion section
in the Symbiotic Design Forums. We will
be happy to guide you through the process.
One of the
most important steps in SEO is to make sure your website is complete.
Do not have broken links or use "Under Construction" pages througout
your site. Also, be sure that your textual copy is keyword rich. By keyword
rich, I mean that if you are targeting widget sales, refer to your product
as widgets and not thingamabobs. If you are offering memory enhancement
training, refer to people's memory more than their mind or their brain.
Search engines have changed the way we write online because they do not
consider synonymns
Assure that
each and every page possible on your site has a unique title. Search engines
All search
engines are Meta tag friendly. However, certain search engines like Google
deliberately ignore the Meta Description. And yet, most search engines
and directories on the web are meta based. Because Google pays attention
to how these smaller search engines rank you and boost your ranking accordingly,
we recomend
Another way
to get started right away is to get listed in as many decent search engines
and directories as possible. We would, of course, suggest that you list
your links in our DirPort.com directory. Within the DirPort
directory, you will find several categories where you can leave your links,
including the Internet > Directories, Internet > Search
Engines and Internet > Link Exchanges subcategories.
We recomend
that you use the DirPort.com directory first, however we do try
to provide a list of links to the add url pages of the major or significant
search engines and directories here below (as well as a brief list on
our homepage as well) for search engines that are kind enough to provide
us with a graphic to use:
| Search
Engines, Pay Per Click Advertisment Listing Engines, Web Directories,
Portals & Link Exchanges |
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Search |
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(A
Lycos Company) |
(A
Yahoo! Company) |
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(A
Yahoo! Company) |
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Scrub
The Web |
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(A
Yahoo! Company) |
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|
Link
Exchange |
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Grub |
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NOTE:
Sites are not shown or ranked in any particular order. |
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Note that
there are actually many more places that pass themselves off as search
engines and directories which are simply link farms. While placing a link
on one of these sites will not harm your site, the time and/or expense
to do so is completely worthless since these links will not help your
site with link popularity or send you even a small amount of traffic.
However,
the list above, or the even the list in the DirPort.com
directory is an incomplete list. There are literally so many places where
you can leave your link now that it is unbelievable. Websites come and
go daily, and search engines or directories are no exception. Luckily,
we have a much larger database to work from, and when you hire us to do
advanced Search Engine Optimization, professional Search Engine Submission
is included.
The reason that you might want to reciprocate links or even to pay for well placed listings in directories is that the search engines do realize that these are online marketing plans. It takes an investment into your business future to sponsor a few well researched directory categories, including an investment of effort to accomplish reciprocating with another site. Click on the Reciprocate.info link to exchange your link with the Reciprocate Links! Web Directory.
Don't forget your local directories and search resources. As an example, YanktonShopping.net is a business and tourism resource for the Yanton and southeastern South Dakota areas. Yankton area businesses should use this resource to their advantage. This is just one of the ways you can research where you can place your link. But be careful about companies that are who-knows-where which create dummy directories just to seperate you from some of your marketing dollars. The best resources are local resources run by local businesses. That said, don't give Verizon's SuperPages the cold shoulder just because they are a big corporation. Business listings on SuperPages are free and worth the time investment to set them up.
As mentioned, there are so many search engine and directory websites that you are not going to be able to visit them all. So although hand submission to search and catalog resources still produce the best results, using a select submission service, in moderation, will also bolster your standings in the search engines. We are currently sponsoring one of the best free submission services available at the Add URL Engine. This submission tool submits to over 40 search engines and directories, and this list of resources is due to expand as time goes on.
One of the
best do-it-yourself website Search Engine Optimization and bulk submission
tools is available on our Domain
Hostmaster site, Traffic
Blazer. This handy little online tool will guide you through the
optimization process and show you what you need to pay attention to. It
will even check your site and make sure it is ready for the search engines.
When your site is ready, Traffic Blazer will automate as much of the process
for you. Plus, it will keep a log of successful submissions and last submission
time.
Proven
& easy to use website search engine optimization & submission
program
Writing articles
and distributing them across the internet with a required author's information
block that contains a link to your site is also a great way to propogate
your link across the world wide web. Good articles that show your authority
on a particular subject, as well as your friendliness and willingness
to help others without such knowledge in your field can alone generate
interest in your website.
Another way
to increase awareness about your business products and/or services is
to send out professionaly written and keyword optimized press releases
announcing your business, new products/services, or company news. Including
a link back to your site and perhaps make it a special promotion page
makes a press release a great way of propogating your link through major
online news and information sources.
Are you familiar with the Google Toolbar and the Alexa Toolbar? If you are using Internet Explorer to browse the web, these toolbars can actually work for you to improve your ranking because they will keep track of what pages you visit on the web. With the Google Toolbar, you have to activate the advanced features. The Alexa Toolbar has site visit monitoring on by default.
Here's what the Alexa Toolbar looks like. Click to download yourself a copy (http://download.alexa.com/?amzn_id=symbioticdesignb).
The "Symbiotic" button in the logo will act as a shortcut back to our site. As far as the two toolbars go, Alexa's actually seems to be the most effective for the Alexa Traffic Rankings, which is considered a worldwide authority in website traffic and is closely allied with Google for stats. Check out where we are:
In fact, Symbiotic Design had jumped over 138,000 places closer to the top of the Alexa Traffic Rankings the very first week we used it.
Why does a toolbar work? Well, you visit your own website, don't you? Most likely, your site's homepage is the default homepage loaded when IE starts up (if not, make it so). Alexa sees all those visits to your website and counts them. So now you are actually participating in ranking sites, including your own.
The Google Toolbar works the same way, but you do have to turn-on the advanced features. To do this, once the Google Toolbar is installed, configure the toolbar to allow yourself to vote on sites (activate the happy and sad face icons). Now, when you like a site, you can also vote on it once a day and these positive votes will generate more perceived confidence in your website.
Get the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer here: http://toolbar.google.com/
Get the Google Toolbar for Mozilla or FireFox here: http://googlebar.mozdev.org/
We have a great deal of other little tricks up our sleeve as well. Please contact us if you would like to have us get your site ranking well.
Remember,
it's not that we can't do your SEO work for you, only that we have to
charge a small fortune (thousands of dollars) in order to perform the
work to get the required results. In the end, you may prefer to do it
yourself to save the money. Search Engine Optimization is no big secret,
it's just extremely time consuming and because of that, no one is going
to get rich off of it.
Please
do feel free to contact us for all of your SEO requirements:
2108
S Duluth Ave, Sioux Falls, SD, 57105 USA
1.605.331.0808
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