Search Engine Optimization Practices and Pricing

Some years ago I was learning about snapping boards in my Tae Kwon Do class. Master Chuck explained that if all you did was focus on the surface of the board, the result would be bleeding knuckles. Instead, you must visualize your fist passing to the other side of the board. With practice and proper breathing, it worked every time.

That one lesson taught me a lot about setting your focus on the proper result. If all you think about is building traffic to your web site and getting in the top of the search results, then you may make some noise but don't expect a huge bump in business. Instead, you need to think about a specific conversion goal: more calls, more emails, more sales. That's the way SEO can help you achieve breakthrough results. Visualize your virtual fist breaking through the barrier to the other side instead of just the "surface" goal of increased traffic.

There’s a lot of myth surrounding search engine optimization, so let’s get the facts straight. Google has put together a guide for acceptable search-engine practices. We follow these guidelines very closely.

Google wants to make sure that the web is a fun and useful place to be. If someone uses their search engine, they want to help them find what they’re looking for. So any finished web site must contain information that Google can understand (crawl and index) and that will be useful and relevant for their search users (bounce rate).

There are some legitimate practices and some illegitimate ones; if you’re foolish to reach for the latter, they can remove you from their index and make it really difficult for people to find you. And since they’re the 800-pound gorilla, what goes for Google pretty much goes for Yahoo, Bing, and the other search engines out there.

When we’re finished building your site, we’ll make sure that Google can understand what’s there. We’ll make it compatible with all browsers and understood by the search engines. We’ll use technologies like XHTML, CSS, Flash, and Java.

Google also likes fresh content. It can tell when you last updated your site. And they figure that if you regularly update your site with blog posts or articles that have links to other interesting sites, your site may be interesting and relevant. If your bounce rate is over 50%, then they may adjust your page rank because a high bounce rate suggests that people who came to your site because of a search didn't find what they were looking for and left.

The site text should be updated as often as possible. It needs to stay fresh and current. It should contain the same keywords that your customers would use if they were trying to find you using Google. The goal should be to climb to the top of the search results and stays there, which requires ongoing maintenance.

Our pricing varies according to the scope of your site. Please contact us if you'd like a bid on optimizing your site. Please see our web design gallery if you'd like to review some of our recent web design solutions.