What is 'Search Engine Optimization'?
Search engine optimization has to do with making certain that not only the content of your web pages is easily identifiable by search engines as being relevant to the search terms that people are searching for, but it also involves ensuring that, on a technical level, the web pages of your website are conveying the right information in the right way to these search engine programs. There are many non-visual elements to web pages that can greatly affect how highly a web page is ranked in the results returned by a search engine in relation to a certain keyword or search phrase. Sometimes the factors that can have the greatest affect have absolutely nothing to do with the web page itself, such as how many and what types of other websites link to your page, and sometimes it has to do with how low or how high on the page the relevant words appear.
How Silverleaf's SEO consultants can help your pages appear higher in search engine results (Or, how can I get to be #1 on Google?)
Silverleaf's search engine optimization team is knowledgeable and experienced in how the search engines scan and rank web pages and will give your pages the maximum advantage in procuring the highest possible position in a search engine's natural (or "organic") results. We will do this using the following processes:
Narrow your keywords
The most critical step in the process of getting your web pages and your website to appear at the highest possible search result rank is to help you to clearly define exactly what keywords and phrases your customers or audience will be using to search for your product, service, or information. Coming up as the number one result for "automotive technicians" might be great, but it would probably be more helpful to appear higher in the results for something like "foreign car repairs chicago".
Optimize your content
Target pages are specific pages on your website that you want visitors searching for certain keywords to land on. Once you've clearly defined the keywords that you feel will bring you the most qualified visitors to your website it's time to examine the target pages to ensure that the content on these pages accurately reflects what the website visitor is expecting to see when they get to your website. This not only improves the experience of the visitors to your website, but it is also a critical step in helping to ensure that the search engines understand that your web page has strong content pertaining to the those relevant keywords. An added benefit of having highly useful and relevant information on your web pages is that other web pages on the Internet will be more likely to link to your content, which has one of the greatest affects on increasing "page rank" value.
Optimize your web page coding
Another important part of search engine optimization is ensuring the code "behind" the page is optimized for the way search engine "bots" (applications that read web pages, parse the information from them, and store this information for use during searches) read and understand your web pages. Some of the most important areas where the web page coding can be optimized is in the <title> and <meta> tags of the page header. Another way is to make sure that the most important keywords appear early in the content of the web page.
Provide links to other web pages
The spirit of the Internet is in the sharing of information, and it seems that this share-and-share-alike attitude can make a difference in how high your web pages rank in the results from search engines like Google. Keep in mind that the search engines aren't just looking for a page with lots of links, but that the links on the page are also of value in relation to the keywords of interest. If the search engine feels that your page is providing a lot of useful information and plenty of links to even further useful information, the search engine is more likely to consider that your web page has the most useful information pertaining to the keywords being sought.
Let us improve your search engine ranking
Contact the Silverleaf SEO consultants today to learn more about our search engine optimization services or to schedule a free consultation.
Some helpful Search Engine Optimization and SEO resources on the web: