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Getting your company’s name and products, or services, onto the first page of a genuine Google or Yahoo search isn’t a trivial goal. In fact, there are four distinct skills that a search engine optimizer must possess. Most supposed Search Engine Optimization companies possess one or maybe two of these skills, very rarely does a firm actually excel at all four. Neglect any of these 4 key links in the chain of Internet Success and you're losing profits! The four skills needed for effective SEO results are:
Don't Over-Design! Many web site designers produce more and more eye-catching designs with animations with bells, whistles and rollover buttons hoping to entice the people onto their sites. This is the first big mistake; using designs like these will actually decrease your chances of a high Google rating. Yes, that’s right; all the money you paid for web site design could be wasted because when you over-design noone will ever find your site. The reason for this is that before you get people to your site you need to get the spiderbots to like your site. Spiderbots are pieces of software used by the search engine companies to trawl the Internet looking at all the web sites, and then having reviewed the sites, they use complex algorithms to rank the sites. Some of the complex techniques used by other web designers cannot be trawled by spiderbots. They come to your site, look at the poor code and exit stage right -- without even bothering to rank your site. So, you will not be found on any meaningful search. I am saddened by how many times I look at a company's web site and immediately know they wasted their money. The trouble is that both these fledgling web designers and the company that paid the money really do not want to hear that their site is ineffective. Covenant Designs knows how to work around this problem. We specialize in attracting your ideal customer. We understand that optimizing a web site to be Google friendly is a careful balance between a visually attractive site and an easy to find site. The second skill is that of optimizing the actual HTML code to be spiderbot friendly. I put this as different to the web design because this gets “down and dirty” inside the raw code. This skill takes time and experience to develop, and just when you think you have cracked it, the search engine companies change the algorithms used to calculate how high your site will appear in the search results. This is no place for even the most enthusiastic amateur or college computer geek. Results need to be regularly monitored, pieces of code added or removed, and a check kept on what your competitors are doing. Many small businesses who design their own web site feel they will get searched simply because it looks good. Wrong. Without active search engine marketing, they are lost in the sea of compeitiors. Without a strong technical understanding of how spiderbots work, you will always struggle in vain to get your company's site in top rankings in Google and Yahoo.
Today's spiderbots are very sophisticated and not only won't fall for these tricks, they will actively penalize your site – in Google terms, this is "sandboxing." Google takes new sites and “naughty” sites and effectively sin-bins them for 3-6 months, relegated so far down the list that no one will find them. In addition to proper English, the spiderbots are also reading the HTML code, so the copy writer also needs an appreciation of the interplay between the two. Covenant Designs' recommendation for anyone copy writing their own site is to write normal, well-constructed English sentences that can be read by humans and spiderbots.
Of course someone can find your site if they already know your company's name and key it in. I've seen other sites that rank high only when an arcane, overly specific search is done such as “Plasma TV Highland Park”, which is nice, except no-one ever actually does that search! Your site may be #1 for meaningless terms that will never improve your profits, while being lost in the shuffle for those terms that bring results! In contrast, Covenant Designs optimizes your site for what your prospects are actually searching for. So the marketing skill requires knowledge of a company’s business, what they are really trying to sell and an understanding of which actual searches provide the dividends. At Covenant Designs, we trust you will see that Search Engine Optimization gets results - but only when done right. We know how to integrate all the skill sets required for your real world success. Call us at 214-703-0360 for an assessment of your site and its business goals.
> learn more: contact Covenant Designs - 214-703-0360. Copyright
© 2000-2008 by Covenant Designs Marketing Communications
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Covenant
Designs begins your search engine optimization process with understanding
where your highest profit margins are. We start by building a steady
stream of new customers wanting these items / services and add in
suggested complimentary products/services.
If
it was as easy as some people try to make it sound, everybody would be
doing it. Sure, anyone can start a Google AdWords™ campaign and
throw their money at the search engines in hopes of a sale, but intelligently
attracting the ideal customer to you site in such a way that they become
a buyer requires strategic interaction between several professional skill
sets.
Thirdly,
realize that copy writing
is a skill in its own right. This is the writing of the actual text that
potential customers finding your site will read. The Googlebot and other
spiderbots like Inktomi, love text – but only when written well
in proper English. Some people try gimmicks that backfire -- such as cramming their
site full of keywords, while others put white writing on white backgrounds (so
spiderbots can see it but humans cannot).
Marketing
is the final skill to effective web site visibility. After all this is
what we are doing – marketing your site and its products/services
on the Web. The key here is to set the site up to be optimized to
the Internet searches that will provide most business to you. 
214-703-0360