Help Customers Find Your Website
SEO Is Essential
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is designing your website to rank well with search engines, most notably Google and Bing. There are many factors that go into search engine rankings and it’s a subject I have a lot of knowledge and success in. Other web design firms charge upwards of $50 per month for SEO and will remove every beneficial line of code if you don’t pay. This is an unfair practice and I don’t treat my clients that way. I believe SEO is something that is essential and I never charge extra for that service.
SEO Basics
There are a lot of minor changes that can be made to a website to dramatically effect how it ranks with search engines. I will briefly review the key elements that appear when you search for something in Google. The first line that appears is the page title. This can be found on the top bar of your browser and should be short and concise. Not only should your company name be listed, but more importantly whatever product or service you are selling must be in the title. The next line you will see is the description of the page. This is written within the coding of your website in an element called a META tag. There are many different META tags that tell search engines everything from the decription of the page to keywords and your location. Below the description your business address will be listed if you’re registered with Google Places, which is a service I provide for every customer. The final lines will link to pages within your website if properly coded
What You Don’t See Makes A Difference
When search engines rank your website they not only look at the title and META tags as I listed above, they also look at the content and additional elements that can’t be seen. One important element they look for is called an alt tag. Search engines are robots that scan your page to determine the content and legitimacy of a website. When these robots see images they don’t know what the image is unless you tell them. This is where the alt tag comes in. The alt tag tells the search engine robot what the image is and improves your site ranking if the image relates to the content. Without this tag your ranking is punished. Many clients that come to me from large web design firms don’t have alt tags in their images. If you are interested in learning more about search engine optimization contact me today or visit Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.