Why is SEO important?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique used to increase a website’s visibility and traffic by increasing a website’s Alexa Ranking and SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Ranking.

What is an Alexa Ranking and why should I care?

Alexa is a web traffic monitoring company that assigns rankings based on the traffic they have monitored to a specific site.  For example, Google is ranked #1 and Facebook is ranked #2.
What does this mean for me?
As a company with a website, Alexa Ratings are becoming increasingly more important when attracting new investors, clients, and advertisers.
How do I raise my Alexa Ranking?
WebDevStudios has a variety of techniques classified as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) designed to drastically increase traffic to your website.
How do I find my Alexa Ranking?
Alexa Rankings can be found directly at  Alexa.com by searching your company’s website.
Also, Alexa offers a toolbar (Alexa Toolbar) that is both used the same for websites as Nielsen Boxes are for television.  The main difference is the Alexa toolbar also displays the ranking of the current site on the browser where the toolbar is installed.

How do search engines (like Google, Yahoo, and MSN) rank my site?

Search Engines (like Google, Yahoo, and MSN) have their own page ranking software used to determine the level of relevancy to a searchers query.  Google, for instance, uses a patented PageRank™ algorithm that considers over 500 million variables.
What does the Search Engine Algorithm consider?

XML Sitemaps
Meta Elements
Domain Names
URLs
Inbound Links
Keywords
Content
etc…
How do I improve my site ranking?
The most effective way to increase a website’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and Alexa Rankings is through SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

SEO Techniques

XML Sitemap Optimization

XML Sitemaps are an important, efficient, and effective technique in SEO utilized by creating a comprehensive list of pages associated to your company’s website optimized for search engine crawling.
What does this mean?
A Sitemap acts as a directory for the pages attached to your site.  Each page is listed with it’s location (URL), associated URL categories (parent tags), and references the current protocol standard (urlset).
When a Sitemap is submitted to search engines (like Google), the search engines “crawl” through the data to provide up-to-date and effective searches.  An effective sitemap will allow a search engine to make a “crawler friendly” search through your pages.
What does this mean?
The search engine will have a list of your site and its pages in a directory where it can easily access all of its content and produce a more Optimized search.  In other words, it creates a more optimal SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking for your business.

Optimizing Links

Meta Elements (Keywords, Titles, and Descriptions)

Meta Elements are tags placed within the code of a page to aid in the efficiency of search engines.  These elements are used by the search engines to identify web pages.

Meta Keywords

While the use of meta keywords has been abused in the past, these tags are still used by many search engines in conjunction with content and other meta information to optimize searches

Meta Titles and Title Tags

When bringing up a website the top bar of your internet browser with display the site’s Title.  This Title is attached to your site by means of a Meta Title or Title Tag.  Not only does this Title display the name or description of the company, but it can also be used as by many search engines as a means of categorizing involved in the search engine algorithm used to filter results for the SERP.

Meta Descriptions

Search results often include a short description of the website’s content.  This is called the site’s Meta Description.  When search engines weed through thousands of similar sites related to the searcher’s query, they often use the Meta Description as a way to categorize.  Besides it’s importance in SERP ranking, Meta Descriptions provide the searcher with a glimpse into the content of the site, which offers the opportunity to compete with other high ranking results.  Therefore, it is essential to have a complete and concisely written Meta Description.  Meta Description is the final way to promote a site into prominence.

Clean URLs and Domain Names

Having clean URLs and domain names can be one of the most effect ways to optimize.  One great example is our client Batteries.com whose domain name specifically describes the company and its product.
When search engines search the web for keywords to make a query, the most prominent area searched is the URL.  Messy URLs with cryptic ID labels retard the search process and are easily passed over.
For example, consider the difference between these two URLs:
For a website page, a messy URL may look like this website.com/product123/
or even worse, like this website.com/product.php?id=12345
An optimized version would look more like this: website.com/website_optimization/seo/
The search engine would recognize the keywords in the URL and produce a more optimal SERP ranking.
The process can be difficult and time consuming on your own.  Let WebDevStudios relieve you of this arduous task.

Inbound Links

When a keyword is linked to a website it is called Optimizing an Inbound Link.  For example, by clicking on the acronym “SEO” your internet browser will direct you to the WebDevStudios Search Engine Optimization website.
Why is this important?
When a page is linked enough times to a certain keyword the search engines will associatethat keyword with that website.  For example, if the WebDevStudios Search Engine Optimization site has been link enough times with the acronym SEO, it will be earmarked for future searches of that specific keyword.
This can be done internally as in the above example, which follows a logical progression of keywords within a site and its subsequent pages.
Keyword stemming can be used by developing links to a page using a more diverse body of keywords. For the above example, links can be created in other areas of the website for keywords such as: optimization, a more effective website, efficient searches, getting more clicks, or SERP.
Also important for inbound links is a Meta Tag.  Scroll your mouse over the following acronyms:
SEO
The first SEO is tagged with the WebDevStudios SEO URL.  The second SEO is tagged with a Meta Description rich with keywords.  Search engines will also consider the Meta Tags attached to inbound linked keywords.  Again, the richer and more frequent the keywords within the Tag, the stronger the association will be for the search engine between the keywords and the website, delivering a stronger ranking on the SERP.
Again, higher SERP ranking and stronger Meta Descriptions = More Traffic and More Traffic = More Money!!

Content Optimization

SEO content is all about rich, readable text with full keywords (as opposed to just “full of keywords”).  Search engines are not fooled by content the simply repeats a keyword abundantly throughout.  Most Search Engine Algorithms consider word ratio.  In other words, the algorithms recognize the frequency of keywords per 100 words (for instance).
The key to rich content is not to saturate but to enrich.
Keep In Mind: The consumer!  Once a person finds your site, this person must then be engaged.
Saturated text is weak and boring.  Enriched text brings keywords to life!