Search Engine Marketing

The Internet has changed a lot since Firestar Design Company began building websites in 1998. The days of "build it and they will come" ended as the numbers of websites increased geometrically each year and search engines became critical to finding new sites.

As the number of people searching each day for new websites increased, a new industry for optimizing websites to make them easier for search engines to find and catalog (index) appeared. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Marketing are the code words for the industry that makes sure your website appears prominently in the ranks of the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc.).

It is our job to make sure that your website is not just "accidentally" found, but that an aggressive campaign is conducted to make sure that you are ranked as high in the listings as possible. By using clean code, strategically searched text/keyword phrases and other proven SEO techniques Firestar Design is able to obtain page rank without you having to spend large amounts of cash each month for pay-per-click ads or sponsored links.

The Future of Search Engine Marketing

If your customers don't find you in a search engine they will surely find your competitors. The web keeps on growing at a very fast pace. There are over 87 million active domains as of early 2007 and over 2 million are added each day. It is estimated that 2.5 billion searches are performed on search engines each day. The pace and intensity of website competition and search engine useage can only increase each year. It's important to establish yourself in your market and maintain a dominant position.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of purposefully tailoring a website so that it can be favorably ranked by search engines, and thus be found by your customers when they perform a search, under a pre-defined and heavily researched set of keyword phrases that customers typically use to find your business, product or service.

SEO is an iterative process that involves a combination of techniques to systematically make a website more "visible" to search engines. These techniques include: targeted keyword research and selection, title and meta tag development, website page content development, URL naming conventions, inter-website linking development, spider-based search engine submission, directory-based search engine submission, link popularity building, campaign results measurement, tracking and reporting, and a large amount of competitive research to name a few.

Targeted Keyword Research and Selection

Part of learning how to do anything involves knowing what questions to ask. If you don't ask the right questions you cannot expect to get the right answers. The same principle applies to keyword research and selection. If you don't know what language or terminology your customers use to search for your products or services you stand no chance of being found by your customers. Keyword research and selection is the process of iteratively researching, analyzing, refining, and selecting targeted keyword phrases that will attract the most qualified leads to your website.

Spider-Based Search Engine Submission

Spider-Based Search Engine Submission (also known as "registration") involves submitting each website page (or URL) in a website to spider-based search engines such as Google and Inktomi. Search engine "spiders" are small software programs that are designed and written by search engines companies to find new content on the Internet. They work by constantly jumping from website to website or "spidering" to learn more about the content that exists on the Internet. Search engine "spiders" send back instructions to their respective search engines about whether a website is new, updated, old or removed. If a website is new, the search engine determines whether or not to include the website in it's index of websites and at what position or ranking the website should initially start off with. Search engine "spiders" are also known in the industry as "bots", "robots" or "crawlers."

Directory-Based Search Engine Submission

Directory-Based Search Engine Submission (also known as "registration") involves submitting website pages (or URL's) in a website to directory-based search engines such as Yahoo!, The Open Directory Project (DMOZ), About.com, and LookSmart. Directory-based search engines are maintained by human editors who make the decision of whether or not to include a website in the directory. This approach to making information on the Internet findable differs from the approach used by spider-based search engines. Spider-based search engines rely on pre-written software programs known as a ranking algorithms to determine whether or not a website should be included in their index of web pages. With pure spider-based search engines the decision to include a web page is not determined by a human but instead by a software program. Humans replace the ranking algorithm in the case of directory-based search engines, so the technique for submitting website pages to directory-based search engines requires careful research, experience, and usually a few requests to human editors to change the display of the listing in the manner desired.

Paid Inclusion Management

Many search engines charge a fee for rapid placement of a website into their index of websites. This is termed "rapid inclusion", "express inclusion" or "paid inclusion." Paid inclusion guarantees that a website will be included (usually within 3-7 days of submission) in a search engine index, but does not guarantee ranking or preference. Once included a website must compete with other websites on the same terms for placement in that search engine. Paid placement programs require that you pay for each website page (URL) that you want indexed. Simply submitting the home page of a website does not guarantee that the rest of the pages of a website will be indexed. In fact many programs explicitly say they will only index pages that have been included via paid inclusion.

To read an informative tutorial about Search Engine Marketing or SEO click here. If you wish to find out more or want to talk, please Contact Firestar Design.