So how can an SEO Professional help you attain higher natural listings and stay there?  First off keywords are very important to a website.  Key words are simply those words that a person may use in a search engine to find your business. 

Lets say you are a Paint Shop.  What words would you use to describe yourself?  “body paint”, “paint shop”, “car painting” or “auto paint shop” to name a few of the obvious ones.  How about long tail versions such as “Las Vegas auto body paint shop”, or “Henderson Nevada car paint shop”?  These are called long tail keywords because they are longer than the regular key word choices.  These are important because this is the first step in determining what we need to do to optimize your site so potential customers can find you.

So, if you have a site call JoesPaintShop.com this means that on your pages we will write about your site “Joes Auto Body Paint Shop in Henderson and Las Vegas Nevada, featuring the best professional painting and finishes with state of the art auto body car paint booths and baking machines for a superior car paint finish to accommodate all budgets.  We accept all major insurance and offer free estimates.”

Many websites are built by design professionals who tend to concentrate on the overall look of the website.  As noted above many of the aspects of what a search engine looks for will be lost on even the best looking websites.  Descriptions such as the one that we created above may simply say “Joes Paint Shop”. You have to take into account that there is much more to that name and type of business that needs to be considered when writing about it. 

We always urge current and potential clients that if you are lucky enough to include an SEO Professional during the creation of your website, you will keep your initial costs down as many of these basic techniques can be implemented along with the design elements and content that the web designer will be creating.  Even Google.com the worlds largest search engine says, “If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.”

So now that you have incorporated an SEO into your site and your pages have been optimized how long does it take to start rising in the search engine rankings?   Allot of that depends on how many competitors you have in the top rankings and how your site compares to them via the search engine rankings.  The SEO will analyze your site compared to the competition and determine along with your keywords what else needs to be done in order to help you rise in the rankings.  We also have to take into account that the search engines change this criteria often so it is not enough to optimize your site once, it needs to be optimized at least monthly to keep the content fresh so that search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN can pick up on the changes.  Many times it can take months to rise toward the top.  With that being said patience is important during this period. 

Next time we will discuss the importance of constant updates with content such as monthly newsletters, blogs and other ways to keep your site fresh and high in the search engine rankings.  We will also talk about the importance of carefully accomplishing this goal without overdoing it.

Bill Gornet is a Professional SEO and is owner of SEOinvestment.com.  With over 10 years of retail and service oriented website experience, his services include search engine optimization, web marketing, analysis including return on investment, customer experience and overall web marketing strategies.

SEO work takes that initial creation and helps take it to the next level.  Over then next several months we will take the opportunity to touch on many topics that will help you as an automobile professional delve further into the power of the internet.  We will also help take the mystery out of the SEO profession so that you can feel comfortable with your decision to go forward utilizing these type of services.

First off lets discuss the difference between organic searches and paid searches.  As you may have noticed, when you do a search on Google Or Yahoo, you will usually see on the top 2 or 3 spaces shaded results and then several more along the right hand side of the page with the rest of the results under that.  The results that show up in the shaded area at the top and along the side are paid advertising and the rest are what is called “organic results”.  Organic means that these are the results that show up for free and are what the search engine deems as credible sites for your search words. 

That being said, those free results account for 70% of the clicks on search result pages.  People tend to trust the organic results more than the paid ones.  A good mix of paid advertising along with some SEO work is always good, but an SEO will work to help you reach those all important organic results. 

So how do you reach the top?  Allot of it has to do with content.  Search engines “crawl” the web with “spiders” which are nothing more than a program that basically goes to your site and follows the links on your home page.  From there they read everything and save the information that ultimately ends up indexed.  From there it hopefully will show up when a potential customer types in relevant keywords for your site. 

As a SEO we go in and look at your pages and optimize them for the keywords that are relevant to your service.  If you are an “Auto Body Repair” service then we would help build your site’s content to include the appropriate mix of those keywords along with other relevant content that will help your site show up higher in the organic results.  We also will look at your web logs and analyze where customers are coming into your website and leaving.  This allows us to make recommendations toward appropriate best practices for your site’s customer experience.  The biggest thing is that we also have to update your site at least monthly to keep content fresh which will help build your organic rankings and also help maintain them.  More on this topic next month.

Bill Gornet is a Professional SEO and is owner of SEOInvestment.com.  With over 10 years of retail and service oriented website experience, his services include search engine optimization, web marketing and analysis including return on investment, customer experience and overall web marketing strategies.