Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Bing search engines have very clear objectives: to provide end users with the most relevant results for the terms placed in the search box. When the search engine stops providing the answers to your questions or solutions to your problems, faith is lost and users flee to other search engines. With billions of pages to index, these search engines use enormous algorithms that weigh multiple data points to determine the most relevant results. Simply put, in order to rank, one must understand the nature of the algorithm and build content that is worthy of being ranked high, meaning: most relevant and authoritative in regard to the query. 

Our tacticians employ holistic SEO tactics to optimize your ranking for high traffic keywords, without venturing into underhanded 'spammy' techniques that provide minimal value and risk your site being removed from search engines entirely. We can’t emphasize this next point enough: We don’t ‘trick’ the search engine into thinking you are more relevant and worthy of a higher ranking, but instead we employ holistic tactics to develop your website into the most relevant website in your market space. Ongoing maintenance provides insurance to keep you on top in the ever competitive and evolving environment of search engine ranking.

Many clients have told us, prior to purchasing our services, that they had already employed SEO tactics, or had an SEO company doing their site’s optimization. Many online directories, most famously the Yellow Pages, have ventured into the realm of SEO as their directories alone were not providing the web traffic demanded by their clients. Gone are the days of packing meta tags with keywords and submitting a site to millions of search engines. Today’s SEO consists of an ever moving target to optimize a site on hundreds of data points. Let us share with you some basic SEO practices, but keep in mind that this information is merely the tip of the iceberg, As a client you will continue to learn and understand the most complex tactics as well.

Step 1: Understanding SEO Basics

Let’s start by defining Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search Engine Optimization is the art and science of publishing information on the web and presenting it in a manner that helps search engines understand that your information is relevant to specific search queries or keyword phrases. SEO consists largely of keyword research, SEO copywriting, information architecture, link building and even viral campaigns. SEO supports marketing, messaging, branding, increasing mindshare and in general should support the company's overall marketing strategy. Effective SEO requires skill in programming, web design and development, usability development, sales, marketing, and a passion for solving multivariable puzzles. We believe it’s more than simply increasing the number of visitors to your website. It’s also about improving the rate of conversions of visitors into customers once they hit the website. It's about revenue.

In a competitive market it's not easy to rank in the top 10 for every relevant high traffic keyword. Some say you might as well try to make a pig fly. The organic nature of the internet provides for an ever-changing landscape. Your competition is reacting to you and so it goes, like a sailing race with each tactician looking for an edge. Likewise, Google, and Bing's algorithms are constantly changing and refining themselves, chasing the perfect standard of relevancy for their users. Your website's optimization isn't a destination. It's an ongoing campaign of planning, executing, monitoring, evaluating and adjusting over and over again, not just to become the most relevant, but to maintain and remain relevant amid the ever changing dynamics of the internet market place.  At Ascendgence we stay on top of these dynamics to keep your website on its game.  Beating the system with tricks is a losing strategy.  A great SEO tactician will tell you that “It is not the job of SEO to make a pig fly. It is the job of SEO to genetically re-engineer your website so that it becomes an eagle. That's what Ascendgence is all about.

Step 2: Choosing Keywords

If you're building a new website, don’t put the cart in front of the horse. Many web designers make the mistake of first designing the site architecture, content, and title tags and then tweaking it with keywords. Keywords must be the foundation upon which your site is designed, to achieve the greatest potential. If you are optimizing an existing website, be willing to forgo the short cuts and make the necessary structural changes to support important keywords. No matter how much trouble it may seem to be, it is insignificant compared to the pay off of a top ranking website.

Start guessing. What do you think people searching for your product or service are typing into the search engine’s search box? This is where the journey of keyword research begins. Gather a list of the obvious combinations of words. ATTENTION: DO NOT USE IN-HOUSE SPEAK. One of the biggest mistakes made in keyword targeting is congesting the keyword list with words only heard inside the four walls of your business. A consulting website's keyword list might be found with keyword terms like: breakout strategy, employee empowerment, masterful coaching, ongoing transformation, etc. These are eloquent terms that the consultant uses to identify concepts or program segments, or even to brand themselves, but are not commonly searched. We at Ascendgence coined a new term: “virilla marketing.” It is the practice of gorilla marketing (low cost out of the box marketing tactics) merged with the new frontier of viral internet marketing.  We consider ourselves masters of virilla marketing, but it isn’t a keyword on our website. It is a word we use to introduce an idea as we’re working with clients. The last time I checked, no one ever searches for "virilla marketing."  Likewise, an executive typically doesn’t search for ‘masterful coaching’ though one of our clients provides masterful coaching. A potential client might search for ‘executive coaching', 'executive management consulting', or even ‘executive continuing education.’ With those search terms they can find an executive consultant/coach that works directly with executives.

Think this through carefully. What will your prospects type in the search box to find you? Try to find your competitors. If the SERP (search engine results page) has nothing but competitors and a dozen paid ads from competitors, it's a frequently searched term. When you feel you have a good list of 25 to 45 terms, run them through a keyword tool. We like Google Keyword Tool and SEO Keyword Tool to validate them. A last word on the subject: You may be in a highly technical industry where ‘house-speak’ is universal. Just think it through carefully; do test searches to see if others like you are coming up in the results; and then quantify and validate with a keyword tool.

Step 3: Follow the leader

Don’t reinvent the wheel. The search engine algorithm, as ever-changing as it is, will judge every website on the same variables. Search one of your most obvious keywords, i.e.: Restaurants in Katy, Katy Lawyers, or Katy Real Estate, and see who is ranking highest. The websites ranking 1 through 3 will give you a very good idea on how to rank for these keywords. Start making a list of top ranking sites for a few competitive keyword terms and apply the following questions to each of these sites.

1. How do they describe themselves?
2. What products or specials are they promoting?
3. What keywords are found repeatedly in their content?
4. How does the site architecture target keywords?
5. Do they have reviews, comments, and other visitor generated content?

A quick and easy way to see which keywords your competition is likely targeting is by viewing their declared keywords for a page. Right click on their page, and a menu will appear. Click on 'view Source' or ‘view Page Source’. You’ll see a lot of html-like text. Look for the keyword meta tag. The keyword meta tag is located usually toward the top between the <head> and </head> tags, and looks like this:

<meta content=" katy, katy texas, katy flowers, katy floral, katy florist, florist in Katy, roses, bouquet, corsage, boutonniere, west houston, west Houston florist">

..or something very similar.

Step 4 Developing Keyword Strings:

Now that you have collected a small list of keywords, it's time to develop and expand these keywords. Adding geo-local modifiers such as 'houston' or 'katy' will help you rank for localized keywords such as 'katy lawyer'. Using a thesaurus can help you develop alternative ways people might search for your product or service. Keep in mind that every person searches differently, so you have to be open-minded to keyword possibilities. In addition, 20-25% of all searches are unique, meaning that you will fare better by preparing your site to rank for many broad strings of keywords, instead of focusing your site to rank for one specific term.
 

Step 5: Using Keywords to Prepare On-Site SEO

Here is a list of a few techniques you want to avoid when preparing your page to rank high on search engines:

• Stuffing of keywords
• Using keywords that are unrelated to the general content of your site
• Placing white text on a white background
• Page duplication

Keyword stuffing is achieved by placing a keyword in too high of a concentration on a page. The method of creating more valuable content that includes your keywords is much better than trying to stuff the keyword as many times as possible in the content you already have. Building this content allows you to also include many complementary words to your main site topic. This provides for those unique search terms and long-tail keywords that are so valuable. Having topics that complement each other is important, as the algorithms can detect unrelated keywords. If your site is about general dentistry, try not to branch out on World War 2 military strategies. You receive better rankings when your site contains a logical breakdown of subject matter and stays true to the general topic.

Old tricks have come and gone. Old ‘Black-Hat’ SEO techniques are now very detectable by today’s search engines. Hiding white text on a white background and repeating that killer keyword phrase might have once allowed you to receive the benefits of better rankings, without over-cluttering your webpage with real relevant information. Today Google, Yahoo, and Bing, are like mind readers, their algorithm see all when it comes to tricky SEO tactics. Do you know the price SEO companies that employ black-hat tactics end up paying?  They pay nothing. Their clients on the other hand might pay dearly. If you are a company that needs the revenue from your internet sales or all of your revenue comes from internet sales the price could be removal from the index completely. Not rank demoted from1st to 20th, but completely removed off the search engines.

A mistake that even the most well-intentioned webmasters can make is having more than one page with the same content. Duplication of pages on your site will either cause the two pages to fight each other for rankings (page cannibalism) or worse, neither one will be indexed. What if we built three identical sites with different URL's and SEO them for different keywords? Sorry, the search engines will see it as soon as the three websites are ‘spidered’ by the bot. There are a lot of reasons that the search engines demote for duplication, but obviously they can't allow businesses to copy other websites and then try to trick the engine into ranking it. Again, the search engines are trying to maintain relevancy in their results, and we like to think fairness is also part of their mission.

Again and again, it is becoming more and more obvious that holistic SEO practices are the only way to achieve long-lasting success in search engine ranking. All the tricks employed are simply short-cuts for better ways of achieving the same results. Doing it the right way might take a little more time, but it keeps you from being punished later when Google finds a way to detect your ‘trick’ with its algorithm.

Step 6: Keyword Placement Basics

With good site architecture, your pages should clearly focus on a couple keywords. Place these keywords in your keyword meta tag, description tab, and in the page content. There is currently some disagreement in the SEO community as to how valuable keywords meta tags are. We can tell you that in certain cases there is indisputable evidence that the keyword tag is helping a site rank, but there certainly may be many instances when keyword meta tags are ignored. The page title becomes the search engine listing title, (the larger blue text at the top of each listing in the search result) and the page description is often drawn from to become the abstract (the body of each listing) in the search engine result. Make sure to include your keywords and variations of your keywords in all of these locations. If the keywords in your meta tags are found nowhere in the content of that page, you may receive spam penalties.

To find out more about our SEO tactics, contact us or visit our SEO BLOG