Search Engine Optimization – Driving Consumers To Your Website

If You Build It, Will They Come? -
While we design and build highly dynamic and robust brand websites and campaigns that elevate memorable brand experience with extremely high conversion rates - we know that simply having a great website is not enough. The thought that "If you build it, they will come" can not be further from reality in the online space. A great website without traffic has no value. Zero. This is why we have a highly-experienced team of SEO innovators who deliver the goods. Everytime and on every project. So the question you should be asking yourself is this - "Am I ready to take my website to the next level and get the traffic others can only dream about?" Great. This is what we do.

There are several SEO strategies we implement for our clients depending solely on who we have strategically identified as the target audience. Yes, we create online brand experiences like no one else. And when it comes to SEO strategy and implementation, our results will astound you.

How Will Anyone Find Your Website?
So we know that in the highly competitive onine world of brands, simply building it will not ensure traffic. What is the name of your website? Most companies choose a domain name that may seem logical for their business (eg. their business name) but don't realize that no one wil every search for them by that name. For example, if you are a Doctor and you purchase the domain name "www.drharoldsmith.com", how exactly do you expect your consumers find you in a Google search? Well, they're not going to type your name - and because your practice area is not in your domain name, how do you expect the Google search engine robots to connect a search for, let's say "Ear Doctor" and your website? Well, that's what search engine marketing (SEM) and "organic" search engine optimization (SEO) is all about. A website without a solid SEM or SEO strategy will remain literally invisible. So, if you're Dr. Harold Smith, MD, and you're an ear doctor, you'll need a team to help you with optimization. This is what we do.

The first thing we will do is analyze your website, as well as the competitive landscape specific to your location. Let's say your practice is located in Boston. We'll optimize your website based on your specific location - based on state, city and zip code level. This involves a multi-tiered strategic approach as described below. If you can control the search engine results pages (SERPS) - meaning if you can maintain a first-page ranking (preferably in the top three organic listings), you will enjoy an ongoing flood of consumers specifically searching for an ear doctor in your area. But optimizing the coding of your website once - and expecting to enjoy the top position indefinitely - is impossibe. Think of SEO as a sophisticated game of chess between you and your competitors. If you get bumped from the top spot on the SERPS, this is the time to up the ante - review the coding of your competitor's website and beat them at their own game. An ongoing SEO strategy, either on a monthly or quarterly basis, will maintain your top position. This is what we do.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
We all know that SEO is about optimizating the coding of your website to best leverage the top three (3) search engine robots - Google, Yahoo and MSNSearch - and that the sole purpose of SEO is to align your website coding with exactly what your target audience is actually typing in when they conduct a search for your particular product or service. But all SEO is not created equal. Many website optimization companies will claim they can bring you to the top - but often don't understand basic SEO coding - let alone a strategically-robust search approach. This is what we do.

A Great Website is Not Enough. It Must Be Optimized to 'Work For You"
When it comes to driving business to your website, iccentric offers an in-depth, multi-tiered approach to Website Optimization (WSO) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). And it begins with a clear understanding of how Search Engine Robots work (known as 'Spiders' or 'Crawlers').

What Is Optimization?
What exactly is Website Optimization (WSO)? What exactly is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? How can optimizing my website grow my business?

What Are Search Engines?
Search engines are the key to finding specific information on the vast expanse of the World Wide Web. Without sophisticated search engines, it would be virtually impossible to locate anything on the Web without knowing a specific URL. But do you know how search engines work? And do you know what makes some search engines more effective than others?

When people use the term "search engine" in relation to the Web, they are usually referring to the actual search forms that searches through databases of HTML documents, initially gathered by a robot.

How Do Search Engines Work?
iccentric incorporates a multi-tiered approach to effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – which must begin with a clear understanding of how Search Engines work. How do they function? How do they scan a website and what do they look for? What type of information do they index? How often do they go through an index cycle? How do they scan through and evaluate content to determine the positioning of one website over another? And on the other side -- what is the best way to optimize a website? How do you get the search engines to see past the first page (your homepage)? How do you determine what specific keywords/keyphrases are the most popular for your industry? How often does this change?

iccentric knows the answer to all of these questions. iccentric has a comprehensive knowledge of how Search Engines work and knows what type of content, coding, and proper flow of site-coding-content information to use these Spiders to your advantage. We know how to accumulate and access information on the ever-changing keyword/keyphrase popularity trends and how to keep your website optimization current with these trends. This is what we do.

The Four Types of Search Engines
There are basically four (4) types of search engines:

1) Search Engines that are powered by Robots (known as 'Spiders' or 'Crawlers');
2) Search Engines that are powered by human submissions;
3) Search Engines that incorporate a hybrid of the above two;
4) Search Engines that source out the indexed information of other Search Engines – or a combination of multiple Search Engines and deliver collective results.

Robot-Based Search Engines are those that use automated software agents referred to as 'Spiders' or 'Crawlers' that visit a website, reads the coding and content information on that website and returns all this information back to a central depository where the data is 'indexed'. The Robot will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the administrators of that Search Engine.
 
Human-Powered Search Engines rely on actual people (huimans) to submit information to them and subsequently indexed and catalogued. Only information that is submitted is put into this type of index.

Hybrid Search Engines use a combination of the above two methods – with Search Engine Spiders (automated process of searching the web) and Human-Powered (where website URLs are submitted to the Search Engine.

Collective Search Engines use a the preexisting indexed information of one or more outside Search Engines and deliver these results to a 'combined' search results page(s).

What Happens When You Use A Search Engine?
Now let's talk about what happens when you type in a keyword or keyphase in a 'Search Engine'. Most Search Engines appear the same visually, and the Search Engine Results generally look the same from one search engine to another. But have you noticed that tthe results usually vary from one search engine to another? When you query a search engine to locate information, you're actually searching through an individual search engine's index – you are not actually 'searching the web'. The results that appear are simply the information that this search engine collected and organized in their large databases of information – collected and stored and subsequently searched by you. This also explains why a search results in some dead links. Since the search results are based on the content of their index, and if the index hasn't been updated since a web page became invalid, the search engine treats the page as still an active link even though it is no longer active. It will remain that way until the index is updated.

Content Relevancy Based On Algorithms
Algorithms are the coding method individual search engines put in place to search out information based on content relevancy (which is the information they collect from websites, or the websites manually submitted to them) and how they organize their databases of indexed information (so they know what information to give you on their search engine results pages). How algorithms are set up vary from one search engine to another – even if they are in the same category (robots, human-submitted, or hybrid). Not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through their individual indexes. The algorithm is what the search engines use to determine the relevance of the information in the index to what the user is searching for. Not only within their index database (the information they have collected and stored), but also the information they collect (the coding and content of your website). One of the elements that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page. Those with higher frequency are typically considered more relevant. But his does not mean you want to llist specific keywords repeatedly – search engine technology is becoming sophisticated in its attempt to discourage what is known as 'keyword stuffing' or 'spamdexing'. But understanding how these algorithms work opens a iccentric opportunity to approach content relevancy in an intelligent and highly effective way.

Website Optimization (WSO)
WSO is an emcompassing phrase that covers variuos areas of optimization. For the most part, this is the process of A) Ensuring that your coding flow of your website is strategically written and organized so that Search Engine Robots can properly read and index this information; B) Optimizing graphics and photos used in the design of your website to download quickly and in the right order; C) Testing your website for Browser Compatibility – on multiple browsers and versions; and D) Ensuring that all navigation buttons, hyperlinked graphics and text, and email contact links are all linked properly.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a term used to decribe a wide variety of technical applications of optimizing a website to deliver higher search engine rankings. The main goal of search engine optimization is to increase your website's traffic by obtaining higher rankings in search engines for keyword searches related to your website. The idea is that with increased traffic, you will have increased sales. This is what we do.

iccentric offers he following SEO processes – but note: not all of these SEO applications are offered by other website optimization companies – because they do not have the knowledge or ability to perform such applications:

Website Optimization (WSO)
WSO which involves optimizing the graphics, strategically streamlining the placement and flow of your website hard coding based on the algorithms of various Search Engine Robots, testing and implementing various browser compatibility, and ensuring that all links/hyperlinks are 'active' and contain no dead or incorrect links.

Full Content Optimization (FCO)

iccentric incorporates specialized applications to force the Search Engine Robots to view and index ALL content (every word and every phrase on your entire website, regardless of the number of pages). Since Search Engine Spiders can only read and index content on your Homepage, it is crucial to use our unique FCO applications to optimize your entire website;

Popular Keyword/KeyPhrase Optimization (PKO)
PKO relates to specific keyword/keyphrase optimization based on ongoing popularity trends over the past 30 day period. And because this changes monthly, it is important to monitor and adjust your coding based on these trends on an ongoing basis. Note: PKO only works in conjunction with FCO:

Keyphrase Domain Redirects (KDR)
One of the most untapped opportunities for big brands, as well as small to mid-range brands, is keyword and keyphrase domains. With a strategically analytic approach to search, many high-producing keyword/keyphrase domains can be obtained - and with a simple 301 redirect, they can be instantly directed to your main website domain - allowing your brand to completely control a territory on a local, regional, national and global -level. But choosing the right keyphrase domains is all about alignment to your brand + your audience + your marketing strategy. This is a multi-tiered execution based on analytic data and consumer insight. This is what we do.

Page Content Relevancy (PCR)
PCR involves the optimization of individual pages in conjunction with that specific page’s content relevancy. Note: PCR only works in conjunction with FCO;

Metatag Optimization (MO)
MO is a process involveing keyword/keyphrase coding placed in your homepage HTML scripting. It is important to note that even though MO is relatively easy to implement into your coding (once the proper PKO research is conducted to establish the current and relevant keyword/keyphrase trends), most website optimization companies place the metatages into your coding improperly – where the Robots can not read them;

Manual Website Submission (MWS)
MWS is where your website is manually submitted to a designated list of popular Search Engines on a monthly and ongoing basis. This process is very important, not just to have your website submitted to the Human-Powered Search Engines, but also to ensure that your latest optimization and website content is current with the Robot-Based Search Engines and others. Beware of companies out there who use 'automated programs' to submit website URLs – which can get your website 'blacklisted'.

Website Traffic Stats
iccentric also offers the ability to establish a stats page that allows for the monitoring of all visitor traffic to your website each month. Understanding how to properly analyze this information opens the door to further SEO enhancement and content management based on traffic by region, popular page hits and visitor profile information. Detailed Website Analysis Reports can be presented to you on a monthly, ongoing basis. These reports are key to  analysing growth and website performance.

Viral Marketing
You can also increase your traffic exponentially by getting high rankings in search engines. For example, if you currently have 5000 visitors per day, and managed to effectively increase your traffic to 1,000 visitors per day, you would notice your traffic increasing each month. There are several factors which can contribute to this phenomenon – the most important one being the quality of design and comprehensive information of your website (the brand experience) that make visitors 'want' to Bookmark your website and share your website with others. With an increase of traffic, this can also have a positive effect on your search engine rankings. This is referred to as one form of "viral marketing". Although 'viral' in its true form means an activity occuring independent of your actions, there are many components that can be incorporated into your website to encourage such activity.

"Organic" SEO
The definition of "Organic SEO" currently varies as it an emerging term. The common core to the term’s meaning is that it describes techniques for optimizing a website’s position in search engine results pages that do not involve paid keyword-specific advertising.

Advantages of organic techniques over paid search engine placements directly creates a high ROI for your marketing spend - long term benefits, low costs, the results are also resilliant to changes in online trends. A wel- optimized stragegy based soley on organic methods can provide results which exceed those obtained from paid advertising.

You will find that organic search engine listings get the highest click through conversion ratios, turning visitors into customers. Knowing this, iccentric will assist you in getting your new or existing website fully optimized for all major Search Engines and Directories, which in turn will help achieve the results you need.

Ethical Optimization Warranty
It is important to understand that not all web optimization companies follow the strict guidelines outlined by the major Search Engines (eg. Google, Yahoo! and MSN) and ICANN (INternet Governing Body). There is great risk in hiring a company that utilizes unethical SEO techniques and applications – whether you are aware of it or not. While unethical techniques and applications may boost your ranking initially, once the the Search Engine Robots become aware of your unethical practices, they will 'delist' ('blacklist') your website indefinitely. iccentric follows all ethical practice guidelines outlined by the major search engines, as well as ICANN regulations and guidelines.

Summary
When you combine the right branding and website design with the proper website promotion strategy, web development and an intelligent multi-tiered approach to search engine optimization, you will achieve the following:

Get "Top Listings" on Major Search Engines
Drive Customers to Your Website
Increase Visitor-to-Customer Conversion
Increase Return Visits to Your Website

Contact Us for a Free Website Optimization Consultation
Our Website Optimization Team will evaluate your current website coding and give you a complete evaluation.

Our evaluation will include:
Analysis pf your current SEO coding
Competitive strategy analysis for your specific industry
Analysis of your website's architecture and linking structure
Analysis of HTML source code and page design structure
Initial recommendations and outline of necessary modifications

iccentric's SEO techniques and applications have been developed and are improved upon on an ongoing basis. Our results will amaze you – you will see more visitors, acquire more customers and watch your business grow. You will quickly realize how important it is to have your website 'work for you'.

This is what we do.