What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is simply the practice of making your website more accessible to both search engines and search engine users; in other words, you're making it easier for them to find you. In a very basic nutshell, search engine optimization is an active practice of achieving website visibility on major search engines for keywords searched by your customer prospects.

By analyzing your site to identify weak points in its structure and content and introducing specific changes to improve your site's functionality, appearance, and overall quality making it both user- and search engine-friendly, our SEO services will help you drive relevant and timely traffic to your website; connecting prospective customers with your products or services at the exact moment in time that they are searching for them.

How does SEO work?

Search engines gather information about a website by periodically sending out “robots” to scan the site. Scanned information is stored in databases in order to classify and rank a website within subject categories. Studio Media Web makes sure that a website contains all of the key ingredients needed by the robots to properly and efficiently gather key information about a website to give it a top rank on the best search engine spots. Optimization involves changes to your site code, including development of tailored META tags, to ensure that you are ranked highly on the search engines for certain keywords and phrases relating to your site content.

What is the objective of Search Engine Optimization?

The main objective is to drive qualified visitors to your web site, by increasing your product/service awareness, capturing additional qualified prospects, resulting in additional sales - all of which leverage your existing online investments. To put it into more practical words - the objective of SEO is to make sure that prospective customers find your website when they are ready to buy.

How can SEO help my business?

Ranking at the top of major search engines ensures that visitors who are looking for your type of products or services find and contact you. Visitors indicate interest in doing business by taking the initiative to search for specific keywords (related to your type of products) and then click on your website amongst all others. The goal of effective search engine optimization is not just adding traffic - it's about growing your online business by reaching qualified consumers of your products and services. Your company benefits from increase in leads and sales delivered with significant increase in highly targeted visitor traffic.

In fact, recent studies show that purchasers are about 12 times more likely to buy your products or services after finding your site through a search engine than all other traditional advertising methods combined (including trade shows, print ads, direct mail, radio, and even television)... at a fraction of the cost!

Why are high rankings so important?

As searchers generally only explore the first two pages in the search results, achieving high rankings on the search engines will make an enormous difference in the amount of visitor traffic your site receives.

How are you able to improve my website’s position in the search engines?

Search engines like Google use an estimated 200 factors in their algorithm (formula) for determining the rankings of any web query. While we don’t know all the factors (no one outside of a select few employees of the search engines themselves) in their ranking formulas, we know the most important ones through working with hundreds of websites over the years and being able to get those sites to the top of the search engines. We are also constantly monitoring the ever changing ranking factors to make sure we stay on top of the latest changes in the algorithms.

Can you guarantee a #1 position on the search engines?

Nobody can guarantee a number #1 position or specific ranking for your site for a given keyword phrase. There are simply too many factors beyond anyone’s control - the search engines changing their ranking algorithms, efforts made by competitors, and new sites being added to the Web, just to name a few.

Obtaining a specific ranking is like managing a stock portfolio. Your financial advisor will do their best to monitor the stock market and other indicators and to make sure your portfolio is managed to the best of their abilities. However, your advisor cannot guarantee that your portfolio will be at a specific dollar value or even that the amount will be up at all by a given date.

What does my site ranking depend on?

Site ranking tends to be “cumulative” and is dependent on the following factors:

Why wasn’t my site optimized when it was built?

Depending on who developed your site and how it was built, you’ll find a million different reasons for this. Many web developers believe it is the site marketer’s job to ensure the site is found in search engines and vice versa. Most don’t bother submitting your site to the important search engines, assuming you or your marketing department will do it. Or perhaps it wasn’t in your original development budget.

Consequently, your site can be launched for many months without the search engines having any idea it exists. Remember that search engine marketing is a relatively new science and is an aggressive audience development and search engine ranking service that requires constant monitoring to be successful. And not many web design firms know this.

I have different websites in different countries. Do you optimize each site differently?

Yes, our approach would be to create META tags for each individual site, tailored to the different countries. Apart from the major search engines, we would also ensure each site was submitted to the most popular foreign engines and directories in the appropriate country.

What about pages in languages other than English. Can those be optimized?

Yes. We generally develop a list English search terms to cover each page (assuming the foreign language pages have essentially the same content as the English). Then we regionalize the search terms for each market/country and translate the search terms into local languages (using our 3rd party professional translation service if necessary). Once that is done, we develop and test META tags for each page/site and have the site submitted to the appropriate international and foreign search engines.

What should I look for when choosing a SEO consultant?

The ideal Consultant is one that understands the dynamics of marketing, business, and technology - and employs the highest levels of integrity in their work. There are a number of unethical practices or shortcuts that can be used in search engine optimization, but the search engines themselves often times will not accept these questionable or “tricky” practices. You should choose a company that doesn't utilize any of these practices to achieve short-term results for its clients. You should also expect to benefit from the research expertise, customized approached, management expertise, and on-going consultative process from a SEO firm.

How experienced is Studio Media Web in this industry?

To achieve a high ranking web site, you have to know exactly the most effective META tag design formula, best web copywriting techniques, keep track of current search engine ranking algorithms, and know what format to submit the site in to every engine and how often to resubmit the site. You also need to know whether your site is technically compatible with search engine robots, what types of pages the engines will accept and which will be barriers to ranking, plus what sort of overall “relevancy score” your site will receive from each engine you submit to.

Not only that, but once you’re ranking highly, you have to monitor your progress and adjust your tags every now and then to ensure you stay up above your competitors on all engines for your major search phrases. These are all crucial steps to a high ranking, but very time consuming and not your core business!

Studio Media Web has engaged specialists in the area of search engine marketing, whose full-time role is to place our clients high in the search engines and keep them there. Our consultants have developed and streamlined a unique and ethical search optimization formula that has resulted in very impressive rankings for our clients on international and regional search engines for over five years now.

I’ve worked with other SEO firms before and they weren't able to get me to where I wanted to be in the search engines. What do you do that makes you different from other search engine optimization companies?

Without question, our knowledge of the ever changing algorithms is what separates us from other SEO companies. The proof of our expertise in the work we have done for our existing clients.

The sad reality is there are many self proclaimed “seo experts” who attempt to provide SEO services for other businesses. The great majority of clients we work with have been let down by one (or more) SEO companies before. In some occasions, the damage inflicted by these companies on your existing website will require you to get a brand new domain name altogether. Choosing the right SEO company can literally make or break you!

Why should I choose Studio Media Web?

Studio Media Web SEO has managed a bunch of marketing campaigns for a range of clients in various product and service industries. Our highly skilled team of specialists has a proven track record of SEO success, spanning many years and dozens of satisfied clients. Other SEO companies may simply use software programs to do the work for them, with little understanding or concern for the work itself. We believe that personal knowledge and experience are far more important. Software applications are a good tool, but they are just one ingredient to a much larger recipe. Many SEO companies use underhanded, sneaky techniques in order to achieve higher rankings. These techniques never work for long, and ultimately end in having the “optimized” site banned from the search engines for using these tactics. Not only has the client lost their initial investment, but they are also left with a banned domain name and abysmal search engine rankings. Studio Media Web makes sure to use techniques that work with the search engines, not against them.web.

What about exclusivity? Do you optimize competing sites?

Our optimization service has always been exclusive for our clients. For example, we would not take on any new clients whose sites are in direct competition with existing optimization clients. In other words, we would not optimize sites for the same key search terms of our existing clients. To try and rank two sites competing for the same search terms would be an obvious conflict of interest!

Can I see how my competitors are ranking for my targeted keywords?

Sure! Our Website Impact Analysis, Competition Analysis and Periodical Ranking Reports services offers you up to three competitor sites to be included so you can compare at a glance how you are ranking in comparison to them for the same search terms.

Is this service expensive?

SEO is a highly-specialized craft requiring much research, forethought, skill and can be extremely time-consuming to implement correctly. However, compared to offline and print advertising, search engine marketing is quite cheap. The cost of having your website optimized is by far the best advertising dollars spent and the return on your investment (ROI) can be very great.

What is the Return On Investment - ROI?

La optimización de su sitio web se trata de paciencia y de trabajo arduo diariamente. En realidad, estar entre las primeras 10 posiciones no debería ser el objetivo final de la campaña. Estar en las primeras 10 posiciones, es algo super gratificante y beneficioso, pero el objetivo primordial es proveer el servicio adecuado a los visitantes que lo encuentran. O posicionarlo adecuadamente para que estos conceptos sean coherentes.

Do I really need to optimize my site?

Well, of course, you have the option of not making your site accessible to search engines and directories...but what's the point of that? What good is having a web site if it is not being seen? 90% of Internet buyers are turning to search engines to find the products they want. Google alone conducts over 150 million searches a day. If you want your site to be found, then you must optimize it for search; and basically, that means you must make it visible to search engines. Websites in today’s competitive business market that are not optimized for search don’t have much of a chance of being found by potential customers; and that goes for non-business sites as well.

There’s really no excuse for not doing search engine optimization. If you go through the trouble of making a web site, then your intention probably is for that web site to be found. SEO just is the process that helps this happen.

Want increased website traffic, higher search engine ranking, and increased customer satisfaction?

How can I know if my website needs SEO?

Basically, the answer is given by your website’s position in the main search engines for a specific keyword or search term. If your website does not appear in the first 30 results for a group of search terms that are vital for your business, you may want to use SEO to improve your website’s visibility in the main search engines. However, if your website does not appear in the first 500 results for those keywords that are important for your business, then you should immediately start with SEO to improve your website’s position and increase qualified traffic.

What’s the right time for me to start a search engine marketing campaign?

Immediately. With 1 billion people using the Internet, and therefore using major search engines, the potential Web audience is so large that a strategic approach to capturing your share of that market is critical. Obtaining higher rankings in the major search engines is one of the most effective marketing tools you can implement in today's online world.

Does every page of my website really need to be optimized?

In a word - yes. Every page of a website can be a potential entry point for visitors. You can’t predict which page or pages will be ranked the best for specific keywords. In short, it is not only the home page that can receive search engine traffic. As such, each page must be individually optimized to for optimal ranking. Collectively, all pages of your website reinforce the common “theme” of the site, which also can help boost ranking. Don't assume that your home page is the most important page on your site.

Can I get to the Top Ten on any search engine in a very short period of time?

Website optimization is all about patience and lots of hard work…fun huh? In all reality, getting your site to the “Top Ten” of any search engine should not be the end goal; while obtaining that high ranking is a nice side benefit, your true target is providing a service to your visitors with your Web site. The old adage “if you build it, they will come” applies especially in the realm of optimizing your site, because once you create a viable Web site that gives searchers what they are looking for, more traffic naturally will follow.

I don’t need website optimization. I’m already doing well in the search engines.

That’s great! However, you probably don’t want to ride off into the sunset just yet. Good website optimization is an ongoing, never-ending process. There’s always something that could be tweaked, optimized, or revamped.

Why doesn’t my website rank very well in the search engines?

It could be due to a variety of reasons, and to know that fully, one may have to take a closer look at the algorithm used by Google. Since it is not a possibility, webmasters across the world have done some reverse engineering of sorts and come up with few useful observations. Few of those are given below:

How long will it take before I start ranking high on the search engines?

That will depend on many factors, including: the age of your existing domain (if you have one), your link popularity, whether or not your site is indexed in the search engines, your history with the search engines and the competition on the web for your desired search terms. Each search engine and directory indexes sites at it’s own pace. Some sites will provide inclusion within a week, while most others may take 6-8 weeks to first visit the site and additional time to index. As a result, it is hard to say exactly when you will see results. New domains are the hardest to work with. In order to start ranking for competitive search terms, if you have a brand new domain than it will take (on average) 9-12 months on Google; 3-4 months on Yahoo! and as quickly as 1-2 months on MSN. Sites that have been around awhile usually improve their rankings much faster but again, the level of competition on the web is a big factor. On average, we tell our clients to start seeing improvement in rankings within 3-4 months.

What can I do while waiting for my SEO to kick in?

PPC, or Pay Per Click, advertisements are an effective way to attract traffic from search engines while waiting for your natural search engine positioning efforts to take effect.

What is the deal with Pay-Per-Click (PPC)?

Some Search Engines offer Pay-per-Click. Yahoo!/Overture and Google AdWords are currently the most popular paid inclusion services. Pay Per Click allows you to bid for top placement in their results. In this scenario, the top placement for a particular search term goes to the highest bidder; the next spot goes to the next highest, and so on. Each time a user clicks on your site via the engine, you pay the price that you bid. The higher you bid, the higher you’re listed. This allows you to directly control where you show up in the search results.

¿Qué quiere decir que existen técnicas de manipulación de los buscadores (Black Hat SEO techniques)?

Para que entienda, éstas técnicas de optimización atentan contra su sitio en el mediano plazo. Con ellas, se obtienen resultados en el corto plazo de una manera poco ética. El problema es que éstas técnicas son castigadas por los motores de búsquedas una vez descubiertas mandando a su sitio web a una lista negra y castigándolo empeorando el posicionamiento logrado.

What is my money better spent on, SEO or SEM (Pay Per Click)?

That answer depends on your ROI. While most web users click on the organic (natural un-paid results) before clicking on paid ads, PPC can be a highly effective method of driving traffic to your site. Many website owners are worried about click fraud involved with pay per click, but the problem is not as bad is most make it out to be. There are tools in place to help minimize click fraud. That being said, as an SEO company, we are firm believers in the results that most website owners achieve when they have a high ranking on the organic search results. Again, the right answer depends on the ROI.

Isn’t this something we can do ourselves?

Of course, this is something you can do on your own. However, large amounts of time, attention and expertise are needed to achieve the desired results in such a constantly changing niche industry. The expense of adding personnel and necessary resources alone would quickly outweigh the cost of hiring our firm, which is why outsourcing SEO is by far the most popular method.

SEO sounds like a lot of work, what do I have to do?

Actually, it is a lot of work. However, you just have to help us define marketing goals and objectives, priority products/services and target audience and we do the rest. That is, although you will be involved in the whole optimization process and no change will be updated to your website without your approval, you only have to help us know what do you want from SEO and we do all the heavy work for you, as we really enjoy our work.

What is the difference between “site optimization” and “site submission”?

Site submission is the submission of your site to the search engines. Site optimization, on the other hand, is a proactive service ensuring your site will be highly visible on the engines your site is submitted to. Optimization involves changes to your site code, including development of tailored META tags, to ensure that you are ranked highly on the search engines for certain keywords and phrases relating to your site content. This makes your site more accessible to searchers and ensures your site is found by your target audience, giving you an edge over your competitors.

What information about my site do you submit to search engines?

In most cases we only submit your site URL to the search engines as it is often the only information the engines accept. Some search engines will allow us to submit additional information such as a description or a title for your site. On directories such as Yahoo!, we must first search for and locate a logical category for your site.

The way we submit information about your site can “make or break” your position within the engines, so we do it very carefully. Following submission, most search engines will use their web crawling agents (often called “spiders” or “robots”) to collect information from the site’s code, then rank and display it according to their own special rules. Some engines and directories use staff to collect this information, which is why there are often long delays between the submission of your site and its listing.

How do you handle site submission to non-English language search engines?

We outsource foreign language search engine submission to 3rd party contractors. Many foreign language search engines provide an English version these days. For those that do not, we will manually submit your site to any foreign language search engines that we cannot access via the usual channels.

How often do you resubmit my site to search engines?

If your site is search engine compatible and optimized correctly, regular resubmission to engines is unnecessary. Our ranking reports and maintenance checks keep track of your site every four weeks. If your site is already ranking highly, there is no need to resubmit it. However if any engines have dropped your site altogether (as can happen from time to time), it will be resubmitted to those engines. If an engine has dropped your rankings considerably since last report, it is time to tweak your META tags or check the optimized pages for any problems. Search engines will generally pick up the changes during their next edit and re-rank the site accordingly. Resubmission is usually only necessary if your site has undergone major content changes.

Should I Pay for Site Submission? Submitting to “Thousands of Engines”?

If you do a quick search on “SEO Consultants”, you'll most likely see this kind of ad: “We will submit your site to all 1500 search engines and guarantee you 14,000 hits on your first day for only $29.95!” Sounds pretty good, huh? Well, don't be fooled. First of all, what 1500 search engines are they talking about? There are maybe 10-20, tops, that are out there, and out of those, you only need to submit your site to maybe eight (and that's even a bit on the overkill side). Secondly, NO ONE can guarantee you that many hits. Just won't happen. Sure, there are sites out there that get that many hits, but they are usually well-established, large sites that have been around for a while and have extremely deep content. Anyone who promises you this kind of baloney is trying to pull a fast one. These services are not only a waste of your hard earned money, but they may actually hurt your search engine results. There are less than 20 major search engines in the United States, and they generate over 95% of the search engine traffic on the Internet. Not only that, but the “thousands of other engines” out there generally pull all of their ranking results directly from these larger engines. The services that promise to submit your site to hundreds, or even thousands, of sites use submission software packages that automate the process. The problem is that many of the major search engines see this as a spamming technique, and as a result they will reject your submission, or worse, ban your site from inclusion. More importantly, most of these services only include submission, not optimization, as a part of their deal. Submitting an un-optimized site to the engines simply will not improve your rankings. If you don't plan on optimizing your site before submission then you shouldn't bother submitting it at all.

I’ve seen many companies offering SEO software to position my website. Should I buy them?

Unfortunately, there is no software that can take your website to the top result pages any search engine without any effort. Software applications are a good tool, but they are just one ingredient to a much larger recipe. Website optimization is an ongoing process that is all about patience and lots of hard work.

What are manipulative search engine optimization techniques (Black Hat SEO techniques)?

Generally put, manipulative search engine optimization includes all tactics that attempt to trick search engines into giving sites a higher ranking than they have earned, in an unethical manner. These black hat SEO practices will actually provide short-term gains in terms of rankings, but if you are discovered utilizing these spammy techniques on your website, you run the risk of being penalized by search engines. Black hat SEO basically is a short-sighted solution to a long-term problem, which is creating a Web site that provides both a great user experience and all that goes with that.

These black hat SEO techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:

Examples include putting keywords into hidden text on the website, keyword stuffing, creating doorway pages to rank well in the search, link farms.

Do you have to make changes to our site?

While many of the changes made to your site are done behind the scenes in the source code, it may be necessary to make certain minor changes to your site’s copy or layout. In most cases, these changes are minimal. We post all changes made to the front end of your site to our test server for your approval before we go live with the changes.

Will you need to access our web server?

Yes, we will need access to your web server in order to upload and periodically update pages. We’ll work on a copy of your website on the same server and will upload the changes once we have your approval to do so. We do our best to keep you informed every time we do an upload or make a change. It is vital that anyone else who may be making changes to your site stays current with the optimized pages we provide.

Is SEO is a one-time process?

No, SEO is actually a continuous process. After the initial optimization, the website should be regularly evaluated and adjustments may need to be made. Search engines change their formulas on a regular basis and we work each month to maintain and improve your rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN. The majority of the work for monthly SEO consists of link building services to strengthen your position on the search engines.

How do I ensure that I stay ahead of my competition when it comes to online visibility?

Search engine marketing is not a one-time project. It must be seen as an ongoing strategic business process if you want to continually stay ahead of the competition. To that end, part of our consultative process is to assess the activities, strengths and weaknesses of your major competitors' sites, and devising appropriate strategies for netting superior visibility for your site.

How long will my campaign last?

Campaign’s length may vary from 4 to 8 weeks depending on the website. There is an enormous amount of education, research, analysis, technical programming, and testing performed in the first weeks in particular. Natural rankings will begin to appear in search engines within approximately 3-4 months.

If I get to the first page of MSN, does this mean I will be on the first page of Google, Yahoo and other search engines also?

No, each search engine has a unique formula to index and therefore rank individual websites. Our SEO services are tailored to meet Google's algorithm since they currently provide nearly 50% of all Internet traffic.

How can I measure the results of my website?

We always install web analytics tools (web traffic reporting tools) in every site we work on (if they are not already installed). These tools will help you determine what is and what isn't working with your website. These analytics tools allow you to tell how many visits your site is getting, where those visitors came from, what keywords they typed in to find you, how long they stayed on your site and other important analytics. This is important to evaluate what is working or not working on your website. We also encourage the use of 800 numbers to help gauge how many calls the website is driving.

How can I tell if my SEO firm was effective?

A good SEO firm should be able to provide your company with regular reports showing how your search engine positioning has improved over time. You should also be able to see increased traffic originating from the search engines in your server logs.

How often will I receive search engine ranking reports?

We send out search engine ranking reports monthly to our clients.

After the initial SEO campaign ends will I lose the rankings my website has gained through the optimization process?

Of course you won’t. Even if you decide not to hire our SEO maintenance services, all the work done in initial optimization stage will remain without any modifications. However, you may want to take into account search engines change their formulas on a regular basis, so the website should be regularly evaluated and adjustments may need to be made to maintain and improve your rankings.

When my website is optimized how long will I maintain positions for?

You could hold your position for many months or years without any additional work. There again, you could drop after a few months. A lot is down to the search engines and their algorithms. As we said before, search engines change their formulas on a regular basis and every day thousands of websites around the world are created and submitted into these search engines. So, basically if you don’t regularly evaluate your website and make adjustments to it to maintain and improve your rankings, your rankings will last as long as your competitors let them.

Technical Questions