Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine OptimizationAll websites desiring dedicated traffic to their site need a Website Development Company as versatile as UIM. By making your website rank as high in the search engine as possible, UIM cleverly integrates strategically placed keywords relevant to your business. The success of this customization can be tracked through our integrated Site Statistics software which comes standard with all hosting packages.

To receive any perceivable traffic from search engines, your website must be in the top 30 results, and preferably in the top 10 as approximately 90% of users do not look past the third page.  For years, UIM has invested the time to understand the frequently changing search engine algorithms. We look forward to applying our knowledge to updating your website and targeting the keywords you have identified.

It’s important to mention that our strategy does not involve ‘tricking’ search engines, but simply applying proven principles and investing the needed time to make headway.  Our service is available for a minimum 6-month period in order to afford us the time to achieve results.  It should be stated that we do not believe that six months is necessarily sufficient, but it is enough of a window to make a difference.

The following diagram provides a summary of our process:

The following table highlights some of the items that may be incorporated within your SEO strategy.

Competitive Analysis

In order to compete, you need to know what your competition is doing. They are targeting certain keywords to attract buyers, and these need to be taken into consideration. Many of your competitors will likely also have inbound links from other websites. This is important to identify, because you’ll want your website linked at some of those places as well (link building is an important part of any SEO campaign and discussed in more detail below).

• Using a variety of analysis tools, we will identify what keywords your top competitors are using to generate traffic
• We will need assistance from you in identifying your competitors
• Using a variety of analysis tools, we will identify and analyze the inbound links to your competitors’ websites
• All information will be provided in a detailed report

As a final point on this facet of our efforts, SEO is an exercise in leapfrogging over other sites, which is why it is very important to understand and consider the competitors in the process.

Creating Site-Wide META Tags

META tags are part of your website pages that users cannot see. They include keywords about your site and a description. It used to be that search engines placed a lot of importance on these tags, and without them you would be severely harming your chances of ranking well. These days though, a lot of major search engines do not place as much importance in this area. But it’s still a recommended task throughout the SEO community at large because it still offers a marginal increase in search engine rankings.

• Review each page for proper keywords
• Recommend modifications to key pages for inclusion of site-wide meta tags

 
Website Optimization

This is an essential part of the SEO campaign. After identifying your website’s keywords, each page needs to be modified to properly utilize and reflect those keywords. That way, each page is optimized for the search engines individually.

• Evaluate what the main pages are on the website
• Recommend individual page modifications for each page
• Analyze what pages are missing (such as a 404 Error page, external links, etc.)
• Make appropriate recommendations for additional content that will help with overall positioning in the search engines
• Monitor your website using Google Webmaster Tools

As we have not reviewed your new site, this will be a good opportunity to review and refine.

 
Web Directories and Search Engine Submission

To get your site indexed at the major search engines, you need to have them submitted. Although there are other methods to get your site initially indexed, such as writing related articles to article directories and linking back to your main site, we will conduct manual submission as well. Note that Google does not require submitting your website, as its “crawlers” are automated (and your site is already listing in Google).  We are also aware that some internal efforts have been made.

• Recommend relevant free and paid website directories in which to submit your website to (Yahoo Directory, Dmoz, Best of the Web, Business.com, etc.)
  Manual submissions to approved sites (search engines and web directories)
  Comprehensive analysis of site submission is covered in a Link Development Campaign

 
Link Development Campaign

All of the SEO tasks described before this point are critical in optimizing your site for the search engines.  But they are still only part of the equation. The major search engines, especially Google, qualify a website on more than just on-page optimization. They actually check to see who is linking to a site, in order to grade your overall score.

To rank well in the search engines, you definitely want to have other sites consider your website as important. This is often referred to as building page rank. Google thinks that if other quality sites are linking to yours, that raises the importance of your site as an authority in its field. Google also counts quality outbound links as valuable to your overall page rank. Getting related quality sites to link to your site isn’t a quick process, but it isn’t very complicated either. Research has to be done to select quality related sites, and then identifying how to get them to link to your site is the next step. Sometimes that means contacting the site owner, and other times it’s simply submitting your site to a directory.

That’s part one of the link development proposal. The next part is about building back links. Any link that goes to your website is considered a back link, and while you should build up links from related sites, there are many other ways to a) generate back links and b) increase your website traffic. Generating back links is widely known as a great way to increase traffic to a website.

 
A Note on Social Networking

The latest dimension to creating a network of links for your website is social media optimization.

We do not believe you have adopted any social media channels to date and understand this process can be time consuming.  However, some options may be a suitable and manageable option (e.g. a Flickr or Pinterest account that features various product images; Twitter for new releases or special offers).  We offer a separate social media strategy to maximize the benefits of these platforms, which includes:

• Custom programming of a Facebook tabs to serve as the landing page and for other sources
• Video player, website quick links, Twitter/WordPress feeds, polls, promotions. etc. are typically part of the mix
• The page and group is set up with a distinct personality and purpose
• YouTube channel used to house video that is fed to Facebook (and possibly WordPress
• )Twitter and Facebook wall used to push headlines and drive traffic to your online presence
• Flickr/Pinterest accounts where updates can be part of broader website support strategy

Again, social media offers a background strategy to SEO.  We would be pleased to provide a separate proposal on how we can assist you here if there is interest.  For now, we simply encourage you to clarify who you are targeting and endeavor to feed interesting/educational information that will gain credibility and traction over time.  It is also important that dealers/distributors understand and support your efforts by encouraging their customers to join the groups (it would be most helpful for you to embed an incentive such as a Facebook-based contest- we can explain further).