SEO Philosophies
Lately I've run into some interesting questions about the philosophy
of SEO. I've written up some information here for you to read if
you're interested. If you're considering my services and you're
concerned about SEO methods, it is a good idea to learn a little more
about how I work.
Google's Philosophy
What I have come to understand about Google's philosophy is this: they
wanted to build a search engine that worked. Before Google, searching
for something online was a bit of a mess. You'd type in a certain
phrase and the results you got were often not even close to what you
were looking for.
Google wanted to
change all that, and they have. Now, when you use Google to search for
a certain keyword phrase, you find exactly what you were looking for.
There is a reason for this, and it's pretty logical -- Google makes
sure that each website is about what it says it's about.
In a nutshell,
Google reviews some basic structural elements about each website to
verify that everything is matching up. It checks a website's title,
meta keywords and description, headings, links, content, and other
factors to see if all appears congruent with itself. If you've got a
website that claims to be about Pets, and the images all appear to be
of pets, and the titles of the pages are about pets, and the text on
the page is also related to pets, then it is safe to assume that the
website really is about pets. Then Google feels confident in listing
this website in the results when a person searches for "pets".
My Philosophies
I am a logical
and realistic person, and I always use the most simple methods that I
can. I have found that this works better on many levels. Below are a
few questions that I've been asked, and answers that you might find
surprising.
How
will I know if your website is ranking well for your keywords?
There are many
tools that you can use that will track your keyword rankings, your
PageRank, your SEO "grade", and other variables. I don't bother with
these. In my opinion, the best way to see where your website ranks for
certain keywords is to type those keywords into Google and see what
comes up. You don't need to do anything fancier than that.
How
do I know that your website will still rank well for your keywords a
six months later, or longer?
Nobody
can really predict this, but there are things that you can do to help
your chances. Most importantly, it's vital that you keep your
website updated on a regular basis. You can do this on your own, or
you can take advantage of my Ongoing Support option ($30/month).
Since the nature
of websites is that they are always changeable, you can revisit your
SEO methods in the future if necessary. Google often makes slight
adjustments to their algorithm. More importantly, you don't know what
competing websites will be doing. They might make some great SEO
improvements, or they might fall away.
How
will I verify that your website is better optimized for Google after
I've worked on it?
I will check to
see how your website ranks in Google before I work on it, and I'll
check to see how it ranks after I work on it. You don't need to do
anything more complicated than that.
SEO
methods can make a website look worse or be less functional. How do
I get around that?
There is a
balance that can be found. A website can look nice, be useful for the
viewer, and also be optimized for search engines. You can have it all
if you're willing to give a little and take a little. You probably
can't have a website that is entirely built with Flash, for example, but you're not
required to live with a dull and plain website, either.
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