With the electronics document industry gaining more popularity every day and less paper print being distributed the internet has become the platform for finding businesses for the services you need and desire.  Unlike Google Adwords and Facebook ads Search Engine Optimization (SEO) cost you nothing but your time.  SEO gives you an advantage because your information only shows up when people are looking for a topic related to your business or service.  There are more people not asking for your business url and just saying I will “Google It”.  This is where SEO comes into play and how certain techniques can influence the search engine to make sure you are “On Top Of Google Search” meaning the first page of a search.

More now than ever businesses are getting web sites designed and getting SEO companies to audit the sites and make them search engine friendly.  The problem with SEO is there is much involved and much that gets overlooked in the audit process.  There are many little secrets and tactics that can make a huge difference that many businesses and website owners can do independently on their own at no cost.

Google search algorithm is very involved Larry Page’s thesaurus he wrote for Stanford can be found at this link http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/361/1/1998-8.pdf it’s quite in dept and very few SEO people have ever read this document or know it exists.  By using a few of Google’s basic tools they offer you can influence your search results and help you move right up the search engine rankings.

The first important tool is Google Analytics sign up for an account and install the code on every page of your site or use the site tools to add the Analytics code.  This information is SO important for more reasons then I can list.  Analytics itself holds a great deal of search engine weight and it has been proven that sites with a Google Analytics account rank higher than others.  Site page analytics and link popularity has a very large influencer in Google’s page ranking system.

The next tool I would definitely sign up for and add to any web site that wants good SEO results is Google Webmaster Tools.  This tool is very important for a number of reasons with this tool you can view how Google Search views your page for searching.  This tool by itself is important but there is a feature in Google Analytics that allows you to link the two account together which I would recommend doing right away.  This allows you to use Google Webmaster tools as not only a way to view search but allows you to influence the Analytics data by checking page indexing, site mapping and backlinking formation.  This makes these two tools your biggest allies in the effort to improve your page ranking.

One of the biggest parts of SEO that is overlooked is backlinking.  Most of us have heard of the phrase “Link Weight” this references the backlinking technique.  A site with a lot of inbound links indicates to Google Search that a site is popular there for link popularity is playing a role in your page ranking.  Backlinking is more than just making links.  One top level backlink from a highly ranked page like YouTube or Facebook holds more link weight then a bunch of spam links from a free wordpress website.

Since we are speaking about wordpress this is another piece of SEO that gets missed regularly blogging.  I always read help your page rank by starting a blog.  The blog only helps your site if it’s installed under a subdirectory of your root domain.  For example www.yoursite.com/blog There are a few huge reasons for this search engines get influiced by content but a search engine is not smart enough to know that yoursite.wordpress.com is the same owner as www.yoursite.com.  The point of the blog in a subdirectory is to gain text rich word content, page indexing and backlinks for your domain.  By using the subdirectory of your domain you get all this important SEO influence to your domain not a free blogging platform’s domain.

One thing to always remember when dealing with SEO is design sites for people not for search engines.  The general rule is if people can’t find the information neither can search engine crawlers.  Try to avoid Javascript or Java programming language it blocks the meta crawlers. Java is generally slow and Google does factor in site performance into their ranking system.  Flash is another problem don’t embed your text inside of flash code the meta crawlers will have a hard time reading the information and may miss content.  The best sites are HyperText Markup Language (HTML) they are text based so they are very easy and fast for search engine crawlers to read and your pagerank will not suffer because of performance issues.

As the internet continues to grow and change the need for better page ranking and search engine friendly pages continues to rise.  The search engine algorithms are always changing so you need the most search engine friendly page.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves modifying a website to be “search engine friendly” so it will rank higher in the search engines. Your company’s presence on search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN/Bing are important in gaining an online presence and online business.

We all know that when consumers look for a product or service, they turn to search engines for answers. In fact, hundreds of millions of search queries are run on search engines every day.

More now then ever businesses are relying on the Internet to get business and are having SEO audits done of there web sites.  But Search Engine Optimization is more then just web site setup and structure.  There are a lot of other variables that search engines take into consideration.  These things get over looked in Search Engine Optimization audits.  Let’s take a look at what they are

1. Google & Bing Webmasters Account Setup

This is so important for testing the way the major search engines are crawling your site.  This is a HUGE piece when understanding why robots.txt is acting the way it is and why your site map is not showing the correct amount of pages.

You can specify and add pages that are not being indexed by the crawlers and you can link this account with Google Analytics to see what queries and keywords are ranking the best and where you can improve.

2. Website Analytics

This information is SO important for more reasons then I can list.  But the basic reason is one linking this information with Webmaster tools is valuable and SEO effective.  Analytics in it self holds a lot of search engine weight and has been proven then sites with Google Analytics account rank higher then others.

3. Back Linking

Back Links, Back Links and more Back Links.  Search Engine crawlers love back links.  Back Links tell the search engines two thinks you have inbound links which help your ranking and helps them determine link popularity which is important the more popular a link is and the more back links to a page the higher you rank.

4. Meta Description

A lot of SEO people and myself are going to tell you Meta data does little to nothing for SEO anymore.  People will tell you don’t obsess with your Meta description its not helping your page rank.

I believe this is something that is HUGELY disregarded in SEO audits.  I don’t care if you are ranked number #1 by Google or Bing if your Meta Description is not attractive customers are going to click on the #2 ranked site.  I see so many #1 ranked pages with no description.

That’s like the old med for “Bring the horse to water but you can’t make it drink”

Your number one for that query but there is no an core to make them click threw.

Over all I think SEO audits are a good thing, are important and money well spent.  I would love to work with anyone who reads this to help them with there Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work.  But even if you are doing it yourself or having another company do it for you please make sure they don’t over look the little things that can help you go from the bottom to the top on any search engine.

If you are interest in working with me please e-mail Brandon Lipani at admin@allamericancomputerrepair.com