Search Engine Positioning in Oregon

Here is the basic strategy of what we do, using multiple tools:

I. Choosing The Keyword Phrase

"Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain."
Brent Winters, President, FirstPlace Software, Inc.

Selecting your keyword phrase for your site is one of the most important steps you can take to get those improved search engine rankings. This is the phrase which you expect the user to enter to the search engines to get to your site. It normally consists of 3-5 words. Select the wrong keyword phrase and everything else is worthless. The goal is to be on the first page returned. If you are not within the first three pages returned, you are a lost cause. You want a keyword phrase that users will use often with few competing web sites. Moreover, you want a phrase that is problem-oriented. You want the user to enter a phrase to the search engine that defines the problem. For example, if you sell glucosamine for joint pain you will find, in general, using a keyword phrase like "joint pain" is better than one like "glucosamine". Think problem to solution.

We start with a query of hundreds of web pages on the Internet that deal with you concept. We extract all the keywords (one and two-word in length) we can from these sites that are used in the title, meta-tags, and body. These are then sorted in the order of how they are used. A Thesaurus is also used to find words of similar meaning.

From these keywords, our software tools build a list of multiple keyword phrases. We also obtain a prediction statistic on the count of the predicted traffic for each keyword phrase for the day we make the analysis both for the organic (free) search engines, directories, and the pay-per-bid engines.

In the next step, we identify the number of competing web sites for all the selected keyword phrases. Generally we do this for both the Yahoo and Google engines; but we can use other engines, directories, and pay-per-bid if you desire. The program then calculates a KEI value for each keyword phrase. Remember we want a keyword phrase that is used often with few competing sites. The KEI index measures that. The final keyword phrase list, sorted in descending KEI order for each engine, is printed an evaluated.

The report is sent to you and we work with you to determine the final keyword phrases used. Often a site has multiple entry points you are targeting, with a different keyword phrase for each. Sometimes a second cycle is needed to target things most efficiently.

Remember your search engine listing is dynamic, and you should expect your position to change with time. On our business site, we are constantly changing the keyword phrases and resulting page design that follows from this. The Internet is very dynamic and organic. People will see your success and try to copy what you did. Cultural changes make some hot keyword phrases obsolete and then new ones emerge. There is a war going on, and to win you must engage.

2. Get Starting Benchmarks

If you already have a site operational, document your starting point. What are the current hits, pageviews, and session counts for your site? Where are most of your hits coming from? What pages are hit the most? How many links do you have going into your site? What is the quality of these links? Which search engines and directories are you already positioned? What is the strength of your competition? We can help you define this.

3. Design Your Web Site to Target One or More Keyword Phrases

If you already have a web site, this generally involves some redesign. This may not be too major, but is important. If you don't have a web site designed yet, your task is to design it. We have tools that can evaluate the page design objectively in terms of how the page looks to the search engines. Either way, you site needs to quckly define the problem for your client, tell how you can meet it, and then call for action. At the same time you must taget the design to your keyword phrase. We can help you do this.

Our tool objectively analyzes your page design and evaluates your keyword phrase placement for a specific search engine. The tool also objectively compares the page design (and its use of your keyword phrase) with the top 15 of your competitors. The analysis, for example, might show you should have 5-8 words in the page title for good search engine positioning and you have 12. This report also checks for web design for any of the common types of search engine spamming. Finally, the report also shows you a critical analysis of your competitor's web sites.

Again, this report is dynamic. The search engines change their rules frequently, and we subscribe to expensive updates to insure your reports are as accurate as possible. We keep up with information on whether search engines can index keyword phrases in Flash files, whether dynamic pages are indexed, and what tricks shouldn't be used.

4. Start with A Few Links into Your Site

We can submit your site to the search engines at this point, but don't expect any quality listing until you have at least one link into your site. Search engines start listing your site because they found a link into it, not because you submitted it. If you are hosted with us, we add a link from our site to yours. This gives you that first link. After that first link and we know the search engines are seeing that updated linking page, we can submit your site. In other words, submitting your site is really requesting the search engines to go look for linking pages to you.

5. Build More Links

To get high in the search engines there are two basic rules:

• Have your site designed to a specific keyword phrase that is used frequently with little competition.
• Build LOTS of links from quality sites to your site.

Now that you've done the first, the task now is to get those links.

Now we start with Google using your keyword phrase and identify competing sites. Actually, we already have these from the first step to define those keyword phrases and the second step when we compared you site with your competitors.

One quick step: Some of these may be directories. If possible, we get you into these - giving you more links to your site.

Now we take those high-ranking competing sites that aren't directories and, using our tools, identify all links into your competing sites. From these links we find more directories as well as sites with which we can build reciprocal links for your site. For example, we do web design - but we build reciprocal links with web designers in England and Australia. These aren't our competitors; yet this gives more links into our site and the information on their sites adds value to our site.

The cost here is open and highly variable. We can spend a lot of time if you wish; but if we can build hundreds of links into your site the cost is well worth it.

6. Monitor Your Progress

As with any goal-seeking task, you need to monitor your progress.

We can monitor the links going into your site if you wish, generating periodic reports at a minimal cost

With any good hosting system, you can monitor hits, pageviews, sessions, and what search terms people are using to get to your site. This should be monitored on a daily basis. If you host with us, you get a free program that monitors this information on your site. For an additional $10/month and a small setup charge (for those hosting with us) you get extensive statistics. As your listing improves, you can see these numbers go up.

In addition, getting high in the search engines is a highly competitive game. The rules are constantly changing and the search engines don't tell you the rules. There are companies that reverse engineer the search engine positioning and publish newsletters on what they find. We subscribe to these. There are constantly major rules changes. This means what gives you good results one day can fail you a few weeks later. This is why you need to keep on monitoring your site.

Monitoring is a multiple-stage linear process:

• You need to monitor your position in the major search engines.
• You need to monitor the number and quality of the links to your site.
• You need to monitor the click-through to your site. What is your hit rate, page views, and session counts on a daily basis? What pages are being hit the hardest? What entry pages to your site are being used (search engines may link to pages further down in your site)
• You need to get people to take action from your site. Are you getting clicks but little response? Is it easy for them to respond? Is your web site problem-to-solution in design? Are you using a form for response?

You need objective measurements of each of these stages.

Finally, getting high on the search engines won't help you much if you can't get them to click through to your site. There is only one part of your web page that you have total control over in creating this click-through motivation. Do you know what it is?

Let us help you get that position you want on the search engines!

(Where you are geographically isn't important - we work with global clients!).

Want to do it yourself and save money?