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A little bit about search engine ranking…

Before we go any further, the main thing about search engine ranking is this….PATIENCE!

For a website to start ranking in Google it takes constant work, research and most of all Patience. Just because you have a new, beautiful, nicely coded website does not mean that you will all of a sudden appear on Google the day, week or even the month after launching. A combination of highly optimized (SEO friendly), well structured and user friendly content and site navigation along with back links is what will allow for a site to begin its rise in the search engine rankings.

Tools such as the Google Webmaster (and the XML sitemap) will help get a new or redesigned site indexed within a few days – it is more so the ranking with respect to certain keywords that will require patience.

This is basically how it works;

If you had a previous website that has been running for years but was in Flash or had irrelevant content (or lack of content) every time that the Google robot would get to the site it would see the Flash or irrelevant content and index it accordingly – which is, as it turns out – not very well. Google does not index Flash unless specific elements are put in place.

When the Google robot comes across a website it first looks for content to index. Clean and unobtrusive code along with proper tags only help. Once the site has been indexed, the robot will start indexing the site at a rate of approximately once per month (or more). This will be dependent upon there being fresh content, filed consistently (not changing the file extension or location of the files). Google or any other search engine will compare the relevancy of the website content to other websites of the same nature (competitors) and determine which of the sites is more relevant and in turn rank the site accordingly. Not just content alone will rank your site higher than your competitors, but the website coding as well. The cleaner and more semantic the code, the easier it will be for the robot to index the content which in turn helps rank the website higher. Back links are the key for a new site and any site that’s not popular or has no history. Non-validating sites do rank, although a cleaner code should give you an advantage over competition.

Coding and Design can be considered sidebars to the CONTENT one puts on their site. This is the most important aspect to consider if the goal is to climb the search engine rankings. The combination of well written/relevant content and the other key elements involved in turning out a quality finished product is what will drive your ranking up.

The Bottom line;.

Don’t check Google every day expecting to see your site rank # 1.

If you want to help get the site to rank higher here are some things you can do:

-    Always try to have some sort of fresh content (i.e. fresh news on home page and news section)
Try to incorporate into the website content keywords that someone searching for your product would use ( Very important!! )
-    Seek out as many relevant websites as possible with which you can exchange links (called Back links)
-    If you have the time and resources start a Blog about your company
-    Make a Facebook and Twitter account for your company
-    Post adds on Craigslist or other popular classifieds websites ( be very careful with this!! )
-    Try to get out press releases
-    Get employees to create Linkedin accounts
-    Link newsletter articles to pages within your own website

In a nutshell, try to get your company’s name and website out there. Search engine ranking is a long process and has to be worked on constantly to achieve the desired goal for impressions, clicks, conversions, leads, or overall traffic. Remember that there are millions and millions of websites out there and hundreds of competitors trying to do the same thing as you are. Being the best requires a lot of work, networking and most of all patience. Optimizing a website takes time. It is easy to get discouraged…but you must soldier on.

Another great form of Google visibility that doesn’t require much time but does require a budget is Google paid advertising. This is the number one way to drive quality traffic to your website but requires a budget and some strategy. We would be more than happy if you chose to contact our friends at www.makeitbloom.com. Tell them Heelatch sent you!!

If anyone has any questions please feel free to contact us at hello@heelatch.com.

Dan

Ecofont, beleive it or not.
http://www.ecofont.eu

Combine CSS with JS and make it into a single download!
http://tinyurl.com/25l8ea

Behavioral Separation: Separating Content, style, and behavior.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/behavioralseparation

CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them. http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/