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Search Engine Optimization:

What it is and how it can help your company
By Jim Cota, President and Creative Director, Rare Bird, Inc.

The airwaves of our local radio stations have been filled lately with ads by web development companies touting new procedures and expertise for helping web sites achieve more prominent placement in search engines (often called search engine optimization, or SEO).

The truth of the matter is that there are no silver bullets for SEO. Simple common sense, diligence and hard work are the primary ingredients to ensure the best possible search engine rankings. Here's a quick look at the necessary steps to get started:

First, think about your target market, and then determine what keyword phrases someone who has never heard of you would be most likely to use at a search engine to find a company like yours. Make a list of all the phrases that come to mind and then narrow the list down to the four or five that you feel are most likely to be used (and best relate to your expertise). Truly, this is the most important step in the process. Once you have determined which are the most important keyword phrases, your site can be optimized to make the best use of these to achieve the highest possible ranking.

By way of example, one of our clients, Premier Sheep Supplies, determined that "sheep supplies" and "sheep and goat supplies" were two of their primary terms. A quick Google search of these terms shows that Premier has achieved very favorable rankings for each. This wasn't achieved with special software or schemes to exploit the nature of search engines, it was done by focusing on their primary strengths and working to best communicate those strengths.

But be aware that you can't be all things to all people. That's why it's so important to determine which keyword phrases are most important to you and optimize based on those.

Once you've determined your primary phrases and optimized your site, you'll need to ensure that your site is listed in the main Internet directories and that your pages are being "crawled" by the search engine indexing bots. This step isn't difficult, but it does take some time to do correctly and to follow up on the results. Many of the major search engines periodically change the algorithms used to rank listings, so you may be forced to change the way your pages are optimized. You might also find that you achieve a great ranking for a phrase only to find that no one is using that phrase to search! In each case, adjustments need to be made to maintain and improve your position.

Obviously, there is more to this topic - certainly more than can be addressed here - and I'd be happy to discuss this issue with you as it relates to your company. The primary point that I want you to know is that there's nothing magic about SEO, it just takes forethought and persistence; so don't fall for anyone selling a silver bullet or you're likely end up with a bill of goods.