SEO

Search engine optimization is a hot item right now, it's what everyone wants. The most asked question is "How can I get to the top of the search engine rankings"? The next question is "How much is it going to cost"? Although, I personally think they should be evaluated in the opposite order and the business asking for help should have an idea of it's budget and more importantly an understanding that like anything you pay for that relates to technology it gets outdated fairly quickly. What I'm trying to say is: SEO isn't a one time payment, consider it like taking care of an animal. If you neglect it, then you have a dead pet; same theory applies to websites. With that in mind, your next question for us is probably "Great, now what can you do for me"?

Blogs

Ah, the age of blogs has arrived and although it used to be websites were cool and blogs were hip, now it's more along the lines of: websites are a necessity and a blog is a tool to keep your website healthy. Take a moment and consider a search engine like a parasite that feeds off healthy websites.

Now, you ask: what determines a healthy website, and how do you make/keep it healthy? For now we'll ignore web traffic and it's relation to search engines because traffic is a product of it's environment and it screws up the analogy without further explanation. The simplistic answer to the question of what makes a website healthy is easy: content.

Content

Every website needs it; after all the purpose of a website is the dissemination of information from the person that controls the site to their audience. The audience is not always, but quite often the general public.

As far as search engines go, content is the meat and potatoes of any website. This brings up an important fact that many probably don't consider; what is pleasing to machines (search engines) and what's pleasing to people don't match up perfectly. A search engine will read a straight forward non-designed site with proper compliant code, the same as a well designed site with compliant code. The one with more pertinent content and visitors will be higher ranked. The key difference there is "visitors" a search engine can't evaluate solely based on content because they are trying to assume what people want based on trends. So the fact that more people visit a particular site gives the search engines insight (term used lightly) that the site more visited is a better resource or more pleasing to the visiting audience.

A well used blog is like feeding your website fertilizer; continually updating content (that is hopefully interesting and valuable to your audience) will bring more visitors, but a key factor to constantly adding new content is for the benefit of the web crawlers. Web crawlers can be told how often to crawl your site, but I believe the average site (small businesses) only gets crawled once a month due to stagnant content. The more the crawlers update the search engine index for your site, the higher up it will go in the rankings (they update the index when something changes or gets added, hence new content = GOOD).

Blog Platform

We prefer to use WordPress because of it's easy-to-use user interface and because of the freedom they allow you to customize the blogs skin (aka : theme) the beauty of having wordpress themes is that once the theme is designed and in place you can switch it with the click of a button. Now you ask, "why would I want more themes"? My simple answer is "Because you can". I'm sure your visitors would love to see your site update with a different look every once in a while, and the nice thing is that you can switch the themes back if you're feeling sentimental. Although there are other great and useful tools out there, Wordpress is our #1 choice and suggestion.

Meta Tags

You're probably saying to yourself, "I've heard of those; but really what do they do and what are they"? Easy answer, they are tools for search engines that provide a quick and dirty guide to the information on the current page. Many people make the mistake of having the same thing repeat over and over again from page to page and this doesn't help with SEO, it's almost better to not have them than to misuse them (probably debatable by some professionals).

Keywords

Ah! One everyone asks for and hears about, but is probably the biggest myth out there. Although the keywords meta tag allows you to put specific keywords into your page that the web crawlers are supposed to look for, they really don't anymore. Search engines got smart, the majority of the major search engines; google, yahoo, etc. actually scrub your page for content now instead of asking you what keywords you want listed. This actually guarantees the searcher (person typing into the search engine) that the content they are looking for is found ON THE PAGE and not just a hit and miss keyword tag.

Description

Although you probably don't hear as much about this tag, it is actually well worth using. The description meta tag allows you to provide a short summary to the search engines about the content of your page. Example: when you go to a search engine and type in your search various results return and under the title link there is a short description or excerpt from the page. Often times this is a direct output of this meta tag.

Robots

Even less talked about robot meta tag, and really it's only needed if you don't want robots to index pages. So for most practical uses people won't use this tag unless they don't want their company images showing up on googles image search. However a more practical version which produces the same results is the robots.txt file.

Title

Although not technically a meta tag, the title tag can be VERY useful. The title tag is actually what shows up in the search results as the title of the link to the page listed. Having this very specific to the content gives you a leg up on the competition. Many people make the mistake of just naming their pages "Home" or "About" which doesn't really provide any useful information. When really it could be much more informative. For example, look up at the "Blue Bar" (as my old employer used to call it) at the top of your browser window and read what's listed. Something along the lines of "SEO tips and tricks.. yadda yadda..." If someone was searching google for SEO tips and tricks this page might have a fighting chance, if it's readership goes up over the other blogs and how-to's that are already out there.

Others

Although there are other meta tags and they can be implemented just to be up-to-snuff, AND certain specialized search engines use them; for the most part they are no longer supported by the big guys and hence over-looked

Social Networking

Myspace, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, etc. All of the sites that are based on human interaction and opinion can be considered social networking sites. What do they have to do with your website and increasing traffic? Well that's simple; the more opportunities that you can to link to your site, the more likely you are going to have visitors. Example: If you are advertising and you give out your business card, you have a better chance of getting a call back than if you don't give out your business card. Also, if you put up billboards or flyers advertising your business you're more likely to be seen. The same goes with the web. Not everyone "hangs out on the same street" so you have to expand your marketing and advertising materials to hit those people that may not intentionally be searching for you, but could benefit from your services.

Suggestions

Set up a facebook account, a myspace account and use them as a directory entry. Talk about your business as if it was a person, give it a personality, sense of humor. Believe it or not, this will help some people relate to your brand and it will also give you the opportunity to link back to your site.

Start up an affiliates link exchange within the social network, add "friend" businesses that you do business with and link to their actual site from your businesses profile.

Search Engine Submission

Not many people know that this is actually a FREE service offered by many search engines AND by most web hosting companies. The general rule of thumb is to not over-submit your site because it's considered spamming. Once a month is adequate if the spiders are doing their job. Even though this service is free, we will still assist those that either don't know how or don't want to spend the time doing it. 1/4 hour of our time at our hourly rate is all it will cost for every month you want us to submit.

Directories

Are you listed on portland city search? Are you listed in googles business directory? Your local chamber? State business registry? Online yellow pages? There are literally hundreds of online directories trying to find a niche or special market to tailor to, find the ones that tailor to your business and get in there ASAP. Go for the big ones to, if you're not listed in google get it done. We can help you assess and find which directories other than the big ones that are a MUST for your business.

Design

I know, I know; you're saying "above you said that search engines don't care about design, why should I pay for professional design services if it doesn't matter to the search engines"? My response to that is in 2 parts, first of all anything worth advertising or selling is worth advertising or selling right. Be it your time, be it a product, or a service you want to display that yours is professional and above all else; worth every penny to your clients. Having a well thought out design can provide that. Simple answer to that is "image matters". Which leads into the second and more important point; although machines may NOT care about how your site looks. Your clients DO, humans (at least most) enjoy engaging well thought out and well designed web sites that display the information in an easy to access manner. This pleases your clients which are "visitors" that I spoke of earlier and search engines love visitors (aka : traffic). Some people may not be able to tell the difference between good design and bad design, but everyone has an opinion and the lucky few who have been trained in design have an idea of what is aesthetically pleasing to most people based (believe it or not) somewhat on science, but mostly because we just like pretty things and have an eye for making them.

Quick Note

Although much of this information can ASSIST you with SEO, we still suggest that you employ your developer or an SEO specialist.. or better yet, *cough* us *cough cough* because although you may read a book on building a house, or even have the basics down it's not likely that you'll cover all your bases and build it to code.

If you read through this whole page, we hope you received some insight, and congrats champ; you made it