SEO - Not Hide and Seek

Search Engine Optimization: "Dressing" Up Your Website

Have you ever dressed your child in a bright or wild color so you could find them on the playground? We do something similar when we develop your website - dress it up just right - so that the major search engines can find and display it to people looking for your business services and products. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is meant to help the major search engines, (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) to find and display your website when people are searching for the kind of information your site provides. After all, what good is a website if no-one can find it?

Back to our example... Think of the internet as a massive playground with trees, swings, climbing spaces, teeter totters, slides, and kids. Kids of every shape and size running, skipping, jumping, and playing everywhere. How do you go about finding your child?

• Physical appearance - You would likely start by looking for physical characteristics like size, shape, hair color, clothes... all of these are your way of optimizing your search. Search engine optimization looks at the physical appearance of your website too - how long are the pages (not too long, not too short), are there links on the pages, headings, pictures, navigation tools. 
• Searching - To find your child, you may have to crawl through the play equipment looking for your child's characteristics. Search engines crawl through your website looking for keywords and phrases that identify your written content, your business services, and your physical location. 
• Calling out - As you search for your child, you will probably call out and listen for their familiar voice in response knowing that, even if you can't see your child, you will be able to hone in on their location by their voice. The search engines call out and look for information on the backside of your website - page titles, meta tags, meta descriptions - that help them hone in on just the right results to provide to searching customers. 

As parents, we prepare for playground situations by paying attention to the way we dress our children. If you set up your website with SEO in mind, your business will be highly visible online and the search engines will find it easy to match you with prospective clients. 

Remember, Impressions Review Managing is here to help whether you need to build or rework your website or enhance your online reputation. Contact our friendly team today!

Writing Your Website Content: Marketing Tips for SEO

Website Content Written for SEO​

Writing content for websites seems like it should be a simple thing. Focus on local marketing, provide the best information for your clients, make it professional but inviting, and you should be good to go. 

There was a time when that was enough, but then the major search engines were developed. To help the masses of people wanting to use the internet, they had to find a way to sift through the content on websites to provide the best search results. Writing content to fit what the search engines want is part of what is commonly called, SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

Many articles can and have been written on SEO and there are many pieces to the search engine algorithms, but some of the most important to keep in mind as you write your web content include:

• Page Length - Search engines look for average length web pages to rank highest in their results. Typically between 250 to 500 words is the optimum length.
• Headings - Knowing that headings often give a good summary of content, take care to write your headings with common search words included. Don't sacrifice the quality or readability of the page though!
• Links - The quality of a website in the eyes of the search engines also includes where you link to and who is linking to you. Provide both internal and external links on your webpages to increase your search engine standing.
• Readability - With many people using smart phones and tablets to search the Web, content written in short chunks is much easier to navigate than long paragraphs. Break up your work and use bullet points to help people skim your pages. 

Search Engine Optimization takes a lot of attention to detail, but the payoff can be significant. Remember that IRM is here to help!