Search Engine Optimization & Web Development

What is Organic Search Engine Optimization?

Organic search engine optimization (also called natural search engine optimization or SEO) is the process of developing a website to be returned in search engine results when relevant keywords are used. A website should be designed so that the search engines can find it, can navigate through it, knows what it is about, and will interpret the content as informative and honest.

How does a search engine find a website and navigate through it?

A link to the website must be submitted to a search engine, or there must be an inbound link from another website that the search engine already knows about. The search engine will send out a web crawler (or spider, robot or bot) that will follow the submitted or inbound link and crawl the website. If the website's internal navigation is optimized, the search engine spider will find and index all of the pages on the website.

How does a search engine know the topic of a website?

Through the use of keywords and keyword phrases, meta tags, and by analyzing the anchor text of inbound links, a search engine can determine the subject matter of a website.

What is Search Engine Marketing?

SEO is the free portion of search engine marketing (SEM). Usually, though, SEM refers to paid directory listings, pay per click (PPC) programs, sponsored listings, and paid search engine keyword results. SEM can be an effective marketing tool to speed up the SEO process, advertise one-time events, or rank for the most competitive keywords and keyword phrases on the internet.

How will Search Engine Optimization help my website and my company?

What good is having a great website that nobody sees? SEO is the first step in making internet users aware of your website and driving more traffic to your site. If your website is well designed, more traffic means more exposure of your company, more clients, and more sales.

OK, my website traffic has increased, now what?

SEO goes hand in hand with improving the usability of your website. A well designed website increases the chances that your clients perform the desired action, and come back to the site again. Web analytics allows you to monitor your website traffic and track your visitors navigation patterns. Conversion rate is the measure of the perrcentage of visitors that perform the desired action (usually buy a product or inquire about a service). Using web analytics, you can improve the usability of your website, and improve your conversion rate.

What Search Engine is most widely used?

At the time of this writing, Google led the pack with 49% of online searches, followed by Yahoo (24%), MSN (10%), AOL (6%), Ask (3%), and the rest totalled 8%. While the various search engines have their own individual rules, a good SEO specialist should be able to get your site ranked in all the major search engines.

Do we have to be in Boston, MA (or Massachusetts) for you to perform search engine optimization services?

No. In fact, most of our web clients are not only outside of the Greater Boston area, but outside of Massachusetts as well.