Ranking in the Search Engines
High rankings in the search engines is one of the most valuable assets of your web site. You need to rank high for multiple keywords and keyword phrases in order to develop a steady stream of traffic. Most SEO companies will try to get you good positions for about 20 keywords or keyword phrases, and they'll track them for you to show you how well you're doing.
The problem with this is it really takes a thousand or more keywords and phrases just to develop average traffic. And, it takes time. New sites are notoriously difficult to get high rankings in the search engines. If you need immediate traffic, Pay-Per-Click services such as Google Adwords can provide visitors, but it can get costly quite quickly. You have to start measuring your Return On Investment (ROI) for each keyword you decide to bid on. And, you'll need to tweak landing pages so you get the most conversions.
Getting High Rankings
People have been asking me for years, "What's your secret for getting high placement in the search engines?" I was taught a few good tricks more than a decade ago. But now, I know they're not really "tricks". They're common sense practices. In fact, there are hundreds of them.
There is no simple trick to getting good results. It's found in everything you do on the site, and even what you do off the site. It's in the layout, the architecture, the metatags, the copy you use, the navigation, the site map, the links in your resource directory, the words used to describe your site in links from other sites (known as anchor text). It's even in the alternative descriptions you use in your images and other files that are unreadable to bots and crawlers that index your site for the search engines.
After years of doing this, it's second nature for me to consider search engine value in nearly every facet of designing a web site. It's naturally integrated into my copy, without sounding repetitive or forced.
The one thing I'm always focused on is what people would use to find exactly what your site, or a page on your site is about. The more precise, the easier it is to rank high for a particular phrase. For instance, I've worked for a real estate company for many years. I wouldn't try to get a high ranking for the term "real estate". That would be next to worthless. Even if I was successful in getting a high ranking, 99.99 percent of the traffic would be useless, and looking for a specific type of real estate somewhere else. Precision is the key. And, you must find several ways to precisely describe what's on a page to rank high, and attract the right visitors.
If you'd like your site optimized, contact me, and I'll review your site. If I'm creating your site, it's included in the design.