Hear That Knocking, That's SEO With Business At Your Door - page 3

by Scott White, 2/16/2006

Smarty-pants spiders

Search engine optimization is far more complex than it's ever been. The obvious shortcuts to great search engine rankings have long since been identified and shut down by the search engine companies. These days, high rankings have much more to do with the structure of your HTML code, your acumen at avoiding "trip wires" that send spiders away, where certain keywords appear on a page, how you use JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets and where your formatting instructions appear in relation to your website copy. If you used a WYSIWYG code-writing program--such as Front Page, GoLive or Dreamweaver--you almost certainly will get a much lower score from the spiders.

It really does take a team of people, like the kind we have at Brand Identity Guru, dedicated to monitoring the everyday changes on the battlefield to maintain a high-ranking web presence. And it does change frequently--search engines are notorious for changing their search algorithms often.

What about pay-per-click?

Organic ("free" or "natural") rankings are completely different from sponsored ("pay-per-click" or PPC) links. PPC can be an effective part of a brand's overall online marketing strategy, and a lot professional SEO companies work with clients to design PPC campaigns that are both cost-effective and eye-catching. But PPC won't substitute for SEO. High positioning on a relevant keyword search on Google, with its reputation for returning highly relevant results, bodes well for your brand in a way that sponsored links just can't. However, neither is it wise to engage in an all-SEO, no-PPC strategy. Serious online brand marketers get the best results with a comprehensive strategy run by professionals with both the branding and technical know-how to determine the right mix of the two.

Yes, it's complicated.

But you get back a lot in return for your investment of time and money. A more "Googleable" online branding strategy will quickly yield improved sales and a more visible brand on the web, which, in turn, will also positively affect your bottom line.

Go to article page:

Please note: the following 'About the author' box is written by the article author and its inclusion is a condition of putting the article on this website. It does not represent the views of Homepages Online.

About the author

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding Research firm located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Why Are Long Tail Keywords So Important?

Long tail keywords is a term you will often come across in hpol_abbreviation_seo01 circles, and basically refers to the less popular keywords that get fewer searches per month in the search engines, but are easier to rank highly for, because there are far fewer sites competing for that term. Read 'Why Are Long Tail Keywords So Important?'.

Article categories

Latest articles

Keyword Research Strategies For Article Writers

If you write articles, you probably know how important it is to use keywords in helping to get them indexed by search engines, and in getting the attention of publishers who might want to use your content. Read 'Keyword Research Strategies For Article Writers'.

Are You Targeting The Wrong Keywords?

Like it or not, the keywords and phrases you select to describe your site within your META tags and body text can make or break your listings in the search engines. It's a sad fact that most companies are targeting the wrong keywords and losing traffic as a result. Even sites that have excellent rankings will not benefit if those rankings are for unsuitable keywords. Read 'Are You Targeting The Wrong Keywords?'.

Professional Keyword Research Strategies

Keyword research is an integral part of any SEM initiative, whether it may be PPC or SEO, so it's important to do it right. Its also important to do it right from the start, Google spiders (the bots that indexes web pages) can takes up to months before they cycle to your site, so if you target the wrong keywords initially, it could take months to fix. Read 'Professional Keyword Research Strategies'.