Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is perhaps one of the most misunderstood elements of web development and website marketing.  The market seems crowded with companies that claim with only a few tweaks and a cheque you can be number one.  Far too often search engine optimization service providers focus on trying to trick the system.

Bagler IT takes a different approach.  We acknowledge that the best way to reach to top of the results is to provide quality content that visitors return to and share.

Your Goal

We hear so much about search engine optimization or SEO that it is understandable that some organizations come to think that getting to the top of Google, Yahoo or Bing results is the goal of their website.

If you’re business sells t-shirts, the goal for your website should be to increase your t-shirt sales.  Perhaps your non-profit raises money for international literacy programs, in that case the goal of your website is to raise more money for and promote your cause.

Your website should be optimized for search engines, but must be focused on your audience.

Marketing your website

Bagler IT leverages tried and true best practises with some new approaches to help you market your new or existing website.  This starts with identifying your audience and crafting your content so that it provides your visitors with pages that are not only relevant and of a high-quality but content that is in tune with how your visitors are looking for your organization and/or information.

Keywords

When a user visits a search engine they type in one or more keywords.  Unfortunately to many SEO “experts” this means adding as many keywords to a page as possible. This is the wrong approach; one it doesn’t focus on optimizing your results to your prospective visitors; and two it degrades the quality and relevance of your site.

We help you find the handful of keywords per page that are likely to show up in the searches performed by people who are actually looking for the information or services you provide.  These are the search engine optimization equivalents of what in sales are called qualified leads.

Page rank

Many people think that websites are ranked, but it is your individual web pages that determine your search engine rankings.  Page ranks are determined based on complex and proprietary algorithms.  Each of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing!) approach page ranking a little differently and since their business depends on producing the highest quality results they keep the details of their algorithms secret.  However, we do know that a key component of page ranking is how many people link to your web page and as mentioned about the keywords included in the content of your web page.

Once Bagler IT has helped you tweak your content so that you are including the keywords your potential visitors are using in their searches we help you devise a strategy for increasing the number of links to your page.  The are numerous ways to build more, high quality links incuding social media, blogs and related online communities, and pay-per-click campaigns.

Quality results

An overlooked component of search engine optimization is how your site will look in the list of search results.  Google, Yahoo and Bing! each provide some unique content to their search results but they all include a title, url and description.

Once we have developed short, clear and descriptive titles, urls and descriptions for each landing page we move on to more advanced methods of providing searches with rich, structured content to improve the quality of your results.  Things like properly tagged contact and location information can provide potential visitors with the information that results in them clicking on your link.  Remember being on the first page of Google isn’t important if people aren’t clicking on you.

Pay per click advertising

Pay per click (PPC) advertising is a form of search engine marketing.  You’ve probably noticed that when you use one of the major search providers you will see some related advertisements included with your results.  These are examples of pay per click ads.

As the name suggests you pay each time someone clicks on your ad so the key a to successful PPC campaign is to properly target the keywords, that result in the greatest percentage conversions once they reach your website whether that be products sold, memberships purchased or pages read.

Bagler IT helps you build and maintain your PPC campaign to ensure that you get the most from your website marketing dollars.