Search Engine Optimization: What SEO Is

In the simplest terms, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of improving the search engine ranking of your website in organic (natural or un-paid) search results.  The closer to the top of the search engine results page (SERP) your site appears, the more visitors it is likely to receive.

Search Engines index the content websites with programs called spiders, bots or crawlers that read a website’s code and compile the information from it on their servers. When a searcher enters a query in a browser search box, the search engine retrieves the links to the sites most relevant to that query, and displays them on the Search Engine Results Page. The top organic link displayed has a search engine ranking of #1; the second is #2, and so on down the page.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can bring about a dramatic increase in website traffic. But traffic isn’t all there is to consider when you are looking into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website.  An Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Management Plan that optimizes your site to satisfy your visitors’ expectations, keeping them there until they buy, call or provide contact information, is a plan that will ultimately make you money online.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): a Collaborative Process

Integration with Your Business Plan

A successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program is fully integrated with the overall goals you have for your business.  Before Russell’s Group makes recommendations for your website, we will listen carefully as you share those goals with us. We can help you clarify how your site can contribute to the realization of those goals.

Keyword Strategy Development

Keyword selection is a vital part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Tell us about your market, your products and services and especially about your customers. Let us study your previously existing marketing materials.  At Russell’s Group we are skilled at recognizing the keyword phrases that not only represent your products accurately, but are also high-traffic search terms your clients are using online when they are ready to buy those products.

Whether you are building a new website or you have an existing one, Russell’s Group is the Search Engine Marketing consultant that can deliver internet marketing success. We understand the simultaneous objectives behind Search Engine Optimization (SEO): provide the visitor with useful content in a user-friendly environment, and facilitate indexing by search engines. Expert keyword strategy is the essential element in obtaining those objectives.

Partnership with Your Web Developer

Russell’s Group works with your Web Development team to incorporate these vital elements of keyword strategy

On the Page

• Prominently feature the targeted keyword phrase in headers and early in content
• Incorporate synonyms and related high-traffic words
• Keep the page content highly focused and working toward conversions

In the Code

• Properly include the keyword phrase in meta data, HTML tags, and the URL structure
• Be certain head tags, which can appear on the SERP, accurately represent the content of the page for which they are created
• Interlink pages within the site using keywords as anchors

Clean, Easily Indexed Code

Russell’s Group is always on the lookout for coding errors and choices that prevent or impede indexing of your site.  While the needs of individual clients vary widely, there are a number of areas where we can enhance functioning in cooperation with your Web Developer.

• Improved navigation and directory architecture
• Increased text to code ratio
• 301 redirects
• Repairing broken links (400 series errors)
• Replacing text in images with text HTML
• Identifying code to be rewritten in languages search engines can index

Just a Word about What Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Is Not

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not Graphic Design. Graphic Design is concerned with how your website looks. It isn’t Web Development either, which deals with how your website works. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)  is all about how well your website is competing in the internet marketing environment.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) takes into account the influences and impacts of both Graphic Design and Web Development, and can uncover instances where the appearance or code of your website needs to be altered to improve the quality of user experience or search engine indexing.

At Russell’s Group, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is definitely not “black hat” SEO. We never use methods like link farms, keyword stuffing or article spinning that can get your site removed from search engine indexes.  Our methods are thorough, ethical—and “white hat.”