FAQ's On SEO

What is SEO and what does it mean?

SEO are teqniques used to make your website more search engine friendly with the ultimate goal of achieving higher rankings and greater usability; which results in more revenue, leads, or sales.

How do I get my website to rank no.1 on Google?

Not so fast...

In a nutshell, that's going to take some time and a lot of hard work. However, it really boils down to the keywords and phrases you want to rank for in the search engines, how strong the competitor sites are for the same keyword, how many competitors there are, how old your site is, and how many quality backlinks your site may have attained.

SEO is really an art as much as it is an exact science. But, if you go after the most competitive keyword(s) in your market or niche... you may never actually get to the ranking of #1 in Google.

Some people may claim that they can get you to the #1 position in Google, but this just simply isn't the case. No one can guarantee any ranking, let alone the #1 spot... unless that would be Google themselves.

Google is constantly updating their search algorithm (the way they rank sites) and as such the deck is constantly being shuffled. This is exactly why we stress to our clients to take a long term business approach to SEO for their site and their business expectations of SEO

How long is it going to take in order to see results?

This question is closely tied to the previous question. Again, there is no short answer to such a seemingly simple question.

There are a multitude of influencing factors going on here such as how long has your site been online, the actual layout and design of your site, the number of quality backlinks pointing to your site's pages, and many more.

Also, the more competitive the market or niche of your business the longer it will take to climb the ladder. If your website is in a competitive vertical market such as the health industry, the climb will probably take much longer and the keyword foundation from which you build will be even more important as opposed if your niche or vertical market is a much less competitive one such as lawn bowling equipment.

This is precisely why you should lay the foundation and the analysis of your keywords before you even build your site. It is much easier to move up in the rankings with a well planned keyword strategy right from the design and implementation stage than it is to go back and retro-fit.

What is SERP's?

That's an acronymn for Search Engine Results Pages - or what the search engines return to a user in the form of the results of the searcher's querry.

What are backlinks?

These are the off site links that point back to your site's pages. As a very (perhaps overly) simple explanation is that (quality) backlinks act as a vote of credibility for your site in the eyes of the search engines. So, quality (from relevant well respected sites) backlinks developed naturally over time can greatly enhance the rankings.

What is meant by Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the words (usually blue) that build the actual click-able part of the link. Anchor text is important because search engines make SEO assumptions about the click-able part (anchor text) of the link in that they expect to be taken to content on a page that follows the theme of the anchor text.

What is meant by internal links?

These are usually best understood by describing them as the navigation links on your site. But they encompass any link that connects one page to another from within the structure of the website.

What are keywords, keyword phrases etc?

This is really and entire subject in and of itself... but very briefly... Keywords or keyword phrases are the heart and soul of SEO and such efforts and activities. These are the words and phrases that Google gives insight and data to as to how popular these terms are with the searching public; such as how frequently, how popular, and trending.

Long tail keywords are more descriptive phrases that pinpoint a searcher's intent on what they are specifically looking for. For example 'dog training' would be a short-tale or root keyword while something like 'fox terrier dog training tips' would constitute a longer tail keyword.