What is SEO?

The long-run objective of any internet technology is bringing out the profit. It is highly dependant on how quickly a user interested in applying to your services, buying your goods or viewing your content can find your website online. And what’s more, it is paramount to be in a better position than alternative online resources with the same content. And these are the things you can affect directly!

Since Google and a range of other search engines have been released, become popular and begun bringing colossal traffic to website owners, everyone was aimed at maximizing the number of website visitors by all means of SEO.

By Search Engine Optimization we mean a set of techniques for the Internet for achieving high website rank in search results on different search systems (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.) by certain keywords (for instance, “web development in Philadelphia”, “website design for local business”, “local business optimization, etc.).

The core goal of SEO is attracting visitors to a website progressively to increase sales, hits, customers, etc. It is an integrant part of modern online marketing for hitting the target audience and extending online presence. This is a kind of art that both amateurs and professional SEO specialists have been studying for years. SEO promotion is a highly dynamic area, and even working hard night after night doesn’t guarantee that you will become an expert in this field.

More and more people become interested in learning SEO, as this science can bring significant improvements into any business promoted online. Search engine optimization is a powerful tool for increasing organic traffic and fighting competitors.

The process of website promotion in search engines is a rather difficult and painstaking process that involves deep knowledge of various internet technologies and skills. Only a specialist with extensive practical experience and lots of successfully implemented projects in portfolio is capable to bring a website to the TOP position in search results.

There are no classic schemes suitable for all websites and all areas. However, there are certain tools that can be effectively used for all types of websites. It is worth mentioning that correct SEO strategy can bring incredible marketing results. With its help you can successfully run your business completely online, improving the financial performance and quickly evolving. Let’s review the major tools for SEO promotion and define why the Internet is such a popular type of advertising for promoting products and services.

Google is aimed at showing relevant resources upon the submission of user requests, and search engine optimization contributes greatly to this. Our goal is to inform Google that this specific page of this specific site is the most preferable choice to show user by this specific search request. Your website appears on the first page of search results only if you properly optimize it for a certain keyword. All keywords for optimization form a semantic kernel. It is the basics of successful SEO campaign, and that is why it must be properly built based on deep SEO analysis of the current website version, its market niche, and target audience.

Currently there is a countless number of webpages of the same subject, and Google needs to distribute all these pages in the search results properly, based on its algorithms. However, you can make your own input to push the site of your firm or product to the TOP.

Each commercial site needs customers. Attracting visitors to a website via paid ads, such as contextual advertising, becomes more and more expensive, and often it doesn’t pay to advertise like this. On the other hand, you can spend the same or less money on SEO once and continue growing the flow of new customers for years to come. It is one of the most affordable methods of online site promotion. With a proper SEO approach the results will only grow. In the long run SEO is the best financial investment into your businesses promotion. It makes sense to apply for the services of an SEO agency and get professional assistance in building the optimization strategy.

We divide keywords into three categories: high-frequency, mid-frequency and low-frequency keywords. For example, ‘web design’ is a high-frequency search query. Every month there are thousands of keyword submissions from Philadelphia users, and it is hard to appear on the first place in search results by such a popular query. However, if your website gets there, you’ll get overwhelming results.

‘Web design company’ is a mid-frequency key phrase. Compared to ‘web design’, it is much less popular among users. There are a few hundred of hits monthly, and there is much lower competition, thus it’s easier to get to the TOP in Google search results for this keyword.

And a much lower number of submissions is for “best web design company for small business” - this is an example of a low-frequency search query. There’s almost no competition, as users submit such queries only for a few times in a month, so it’s much easier to promote a website on this keyword.

A point to keep in mind that it’s better to have a website on the first positions for 20-30 low-frequency search requests than to be on 20th -30th positions by 1-2 high frequency queries. This way you will get much more traffic!

Attracting a third-party service provider or consultant is the best option for getting a fast and powerful outcome. When working on a specific project we try to choose a strategy that perfectly fits a certain website and a certain business field.

Search engine optimization is a big complex science that features thousands of methods and approaches. Generally the optimization process consists of three stages.

The first one is an onsite search engine optimization that involves optimizing your website, texts, photos, and video content. Each page and each text line is important here. The more unique and useful content you have on the website, the better it is for users, and the more organic traffic it will attract. “Organic traffic” are users who type their search query in Google and hit your site in search results. These are users naturally interested in products or services of your firm, thus there is a higher likelihood that they will become your future customers.

The second stage is offsite optimization - how many websites refer to your site, how often they do this, the ranking of these resources - all of these factors makes sense to Google. It highly relies on backlink placement, with each backlink having a different weight. If your Mom puts a link to your website in her personal Twitter account, it will be much less important in terms of SEO than a backlink on the Wall Street Journal’s site. Google takes into account the rank of external resources that refer to yours.

Behavioral characteristics are the third tool that becomes more and more important for Google and SEO. If users type some search query in Google, open your website and immediately close the page (and it happens frequently), your website will lose its position in search results. If a visitor stays on your website longer than on similar websites, your Google positions will grow. Average visit duration is one of the most important metrics in evaluating website rank. That is why involving users into reviewing your site content for as long as possible is highly important for SEO results.

Machine SEO has been put on the sideline, as today Google respects more human oriented practices. Best SEO strategy goes widely beyond technical optimization. It must be completely focused on your users’ needs, interests and behavioral characteristics.

As any SEO expert will tell you, it takes about 6 months to get the first results from SEO. That’s why people often ask what should be done during this time? What are other ways to optimize your website online? As a rule, our agency specialists suggest focusing on Social Media Marketing and combine it with a set of online promo campaigns. Each campaign separately cannot make a big impact on its own, but combined together they will bring a proper outcome.

While Social Media Marketing is less effective in the long run, it is very useful on the initial stage. It is worth mentioning that additional promotion in social networks will be very useful for SEO. It deserves a separate blog post, and we will definitely cover this topic in our next articles.

Unfortunately a lot of people do their best to cheat on Google or simply twist the rank by untrusty methods. That is why Google constantly improves its algorithm, toughening restrictions and changing the logic of search results placement. Excessive use of SEO techniques, incorrect strategies may lead to website ban in Google. For example, you have read somewhere that backlinks are very important for your website. Then you saw the advertisement of some link exchange service and found it a great idea to buy links there. You’ve bought a hundred of backlinks, and in a couple of weeks your website completely disappeared from search results for all possible keywords.

This is rather typical story, we have dozens of clients asking to fix such issues. Of course, SEO-specialists in our agency are able to fix them, rebuild the entire SEO approach for the better, but it costs a lot and takes much time. It’s much more expensive and time-consuming than implementing a well-thought, effective SEO from the ground up.

In our work, In Direct Line Development, we always apply only time-proven techniques of “white” SEO. That is why we get stable results with long-term effect. You are welcome to send us your website for a free SEO analysis and further recommendations for optimization. SEO-professionals from our agency in Philadelphia possess deep knowledge and expertise in all modern SEO technologies. Keep your online business closer to your target audience!