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As the popularity of the web grows exponentially, a growing number of businesses are popping up to offer services that will, supposedly, boost your website's visibility/ranking ... and in turn visits to your site... and in turn your sales. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. Let's take a closer look at what is behind "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO), what services these agencies are offering, and how website developers should be putting them right out of business.

SEO is what it sounds like... the act of optimizing your website so that its "ranking" in the search engines (like Google) is as high as possible. The higher the ranking, the more likely a visitor will see the link to your site and click/visit. So, sounds good, right? Right. Because it is a good thing. SEO makes perfect sense. So much sense, that if the firm who designed your site didn't do the SEO work already, they're not real web developers. They are hacks. Those hacks are the only reason why there are companies out there specializing in SEO.

Selling SEO as an expensive stand alone service is the equivalent of selling cars and THEN selling the oil separately. If the car dealers do their job right, the car engine is fully lubricated and ready to roll off the lot. You don't drive down the street, pray that the motor doesn't lock up, and go to a "lubrication optimization" specialist. The same thing applies to websites. Your website should go live and you should be confident that your site is fully optimized and ready for your prospects to find you (within reason...being indexed by the search engines takes time.. and you are competing with millions of other pages).

So, what are some of the SEO tricks of the trade? Nothing spectacular. On the programming side, we make sure that your page titles are descriptive and include keywords and phrases relevant to your site. All your images should have appropriate "alt" tags. All your meta tags should be populated. Your menus should be programmed correctly... no image maps! Proper programming (CSS and HTML) will assure that your site will be "crawled" correctly by the search engines. These things may sound like Chinese to you, but they are S.O.P. in the web development world.

Outside of programming, the actual content "text and images" found on your site should be plentiful, updated often, and relevant to your prospect's interests. If your company specializes in commercial real estate sales, you should probably have references to "commercial real estate" and other relevant terms. If you do your work correctly, this will happen naturally.

And lastly, the NUMBER ONE thing (according to Google) that will result in a higher search engine ranking are other websites linking to your site. Why? Well, what is the purpose of a search engine like Google? To allow people like you and me to effectively navigate the BILLIONS of websites on the internet to find information relevant to our search terms. None of these websites are stand-alone in nature. My website links to other sites in several places, other sites link to me... to their area chamber of commerce... which in turn links to area businesses...which are also found in the online yellow pages... etc. It's all one big "web" of pages and sites, all interconnected. The more "connected" we are to other sites, the more we help build the big web of information... and the more Google rewards us with a higher ranking.

So, with of all that in mind... should you listen to companies that sell SEO to you as a stand alone service? Maybe. It depends. We may offer SEO services to our clients... but only in terms of looking over your website, making necessary changes to the code and suggesting content changes. Several hours of work, and that's it. What SEO should not be is a large 4 figure up front fee and ongoing monthly fees of hundreds of dollars. That's crazy and it screams of scam. Beware of those companies that promise you a number one ranking and that they have the magic formula for success. It's just not true. It's just a company taking advantage of an all too common question from a website owner: "How do I get my website ranked higher?"

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I've found myself recommending more and more the use of YouTube to my small business clients. Not necessarily the posting of live video (although that IS a good idea for many), but also for the posting/sharing of presentations.

If you have Powerpoint or Keynote (Apple's version of Powerpoint. Much more powerful and user friendly, in my opinion) you have all the tools you need to post animated text, images, great transitions, audio ... everything you need to promote a specific product, service, or your business in general. Check out what Paul Durban has done to promote his Ebook. Did it work for him? Well, I've never met Paul..wouldn't know him if he punched me in the face... and I'm sharing his presentation with my own website visitors. Yeah, I'd say it worked.

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