SEO Primer - and what it means to you, your website, and your business

SEO or "Search Engine Optimization" is a combination of many skills and methods all geared not only to provide great position in the search engine index, but also on-going work to move your site up in rank.

SEO refers to the on-going process of making both on-page and off-page updates and additions to your web site so that it gets favorable ranking. A recent study found that over 85% of all web surfers use search engines on a regular basis.
So it makes sense to include SEO - so your site will be found by customers searching for your product or service.

Another main focus of search engine optimization is relevant content on your site. Search engines crawl your web site and prefer to see fresh relevant content; the more original the articles are, the higher your web site will rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). When writing articles (content) for the search engines make sure they are keyword dense. In other words, that they are peppered with the keywords you are using in your site.

The reason is this: search engine spiders/crawlers look over your site and want to see that your web site is about the keywords used; and your web site will rank higher in search engines. Conversely, if you overuse keywords like this, search engines will often penalize you severely.

If you want to be found in the Internet, make sure your site is the best it can be.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is a rather comprehensive set of methodologies and techniques that when merged together and properly executed will produce good results in search engines.

Notice we did not say "Top 10 Results", or "First Page Results". Those are very strong words.
There are many companies that banter about getting your site to the top of the search engines, when they know that isn't possible, and it is out of their reach, they count on the fact that you have no idea what is going on as they lighten your pocket of your hard earned cash.

It is solely up to the search engine to display the results they want, their way. Because there are strict rules that govern websites for inclusion in any search engine result pages. What is their criteria? That is the million dollar question. The top search engines, Google, MSN, Yahoo, and AOL all have very specific policies for inclusion in their index of sites that they feel is relevant to your search. Oh yes, they are in complete control of that, not a web design firm.

Simply put, there are hundreds of rules and considerations in quantifying your web site to be optimized properly for search engine submittal. That's just the first leg on this journey.

Your site has to conform to various basic search engine rules:

Technical Aspects:

• The language the web page is written with must be current, and not obsolete, like frames.
• Search engines ignore websites written in frames and quickly exit without ever indexing the page whatsoever.

Hugh price to pay for a small technical mistake.
• The code structure has to be within certain guidelines, error free, and validatable.
• Must have proper site Title, Description, and Keywords.
• These criteria are used with minimal tolerance for errors.
• Page / Site Structure: Layout accessibility to search engine spider/bot.
• Professional Relevant Content: The single most important element in your site.

The structure of your site is the single most important factor behind a successful SEO campaign.

The basic setup of your site must have enough text, peppered with your keywords detailing what it is you do, where you do it, and the benefits to your customers.

Without these few elements you fall into the Internet abyss along with thousands of other average websites.

We will not specifically detail what practices we employ to provide our customers with a professional SEO program, but we will state that we do make sure that your site conforms to all the basic and advanced guidelines put forth by the top search engines, and our customers results speak for themselves.

We have studied our competitors, and overwhelming found them to come up miserably short in the structure, design, and programming acumen they provide for promises they make.

The following list gives you some idea of what the search engines consider and the weight they give on the most basic level:

• Page Title - 2.0
• Title Tag - 2.0
• Link Popularity - 2.0
• Main Body Text - 1.5
• Domain Name - 1.0
• Keyword Density - 1.0
• Heading Tags - 0.5
• Proximity of Keywords - 0.5
• Bold or Italic - 0.4
• Folder or Filename - 0.3
• Meta Description - 0.3
• ALT Tag(s) - 0.2
• Title Attribute - 0.2
• Meta Tag Keywords - 0.1

We do not mind publishing this information, considering what we learned about our competition, it is obvious they do not employ any of these methods and obviously do not understand the underlying methodologies.

This is to show you just a few of the practical considerations that are crucial to your websites ranking.
All of this and more is INCLUDED in the LazrWeb SEO program.

LazrWeb includes complete expert SEO for your site.