Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become one of the big buzz-terms on the internet lately, and for good reason. SEO is the process of making your website friendly to search engines like Google and Yahoo so that they will include your site in their listings.
There are certain things that companies like Google like to see in your website, and there are other items that they will penalize you for. Optimization involves reviewing and modifying your site's content and code so that it appeals to the search engines.
At EurekaLoop, we are not Search Engine Optimizers (also called SEO's), but we do have a firm grasp on the basics of optimization and can review a site and offer advice (or make changes for you) based on our past experiences. There are lots of SEO's out there who will charge you thousands of dollars to not only get your site listed in the search engines, but to try and get your site ranked higher.
Some of these SEO's use what are called "black hat" methods to try and trick the search engines into indexing your site at a higher position, and your site can get penalized and removed if the search engine finds out.
Be cautious when hiring an SEO to promote your site, and be wary of anyone who claims that they can guarantee permanent top ranking. Since Google doesn't actually publish their rating and indexing rules, any "winning formula" that is being used by an SEO is an educated guess based on their previous optimization campaigns. Some approaches are "tried and true" (for now), while others can get you into trouble. Content assessment is constantly changing.
Google and the other search engines frequently modify their indexing algorithms, so your ranking today could change tomorrow. A successful SEO can monitor these changes and make routine modifications to your site as necessary. If the SEO that you hired is tricking the search engines to get a top ranking for your site, you will probably need to follow up with more optimization funding every time the search engines change their algorithms. It's best to avoid any risk and not play around with "black hat" tactics to improve your ranking.
If you'd like to learn more about SEO and see some of the "white hat" steps you can take to optimize your website, I recommend picking up the SEOBook.
Remember...
Your best tool for high search engine rankings is unique quality content and incoming links from other trusted websites.
Please contact us to discuss your search optimization needs.
