Ethical SEO

Ethical Search Engine Optimization/Web Site Promotion

With over 20 years experience in achieving high rankings in search engines including Google and Bing, we have the knowledge that’s required to make it happen for your site. There are no guarantees with SEO. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not being truthful or is undertaking risky methods that could get your site banned from search engines in the future. We also don’t believe in expensive monthly contracts which many SEO companies require. A properly constructed site that is well optimized with text, images, titles, and also loads quickly  provides the base for your site to rank well. You don’t need to pay a large monthly fee for a good ranking!

Web Site Optimization: $600 (one time fee)

  • Keyword research and analysis of your top 10 keywords or keyword phrases
  • Optimize your Title, Meta and ALT tags with these keywords including:
    • Different Title, Meta and ALT tags for each of your pages to a Maximum of 10.
    • Focus on 1 keyword phrase per page which reflects the content of that page.
    • Consulting with you regarding your content (advise if more is needed or existing content needs adjusting to include good search terms).
    • Write a new first paragraph for your homepage.
  • Hand search engine submission to all the major search engines and other directories including: Yahoo, Bing, Google and Curlie (formerly DMOZ). We will also submit your site by hand to over 20 smaller engines and directories. This helps to improve your inbound link count.
  • Hand submission to up to 10 ‘local’ directory sites such as Yelp, hotfrog, expressupdate and more.
  • Research and submissions to up to 10 city specific directory pages (if that many can be found).
  • Creation of a Google My Business Page, Google Analytics account, and Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster tools) account as well as a Bing Webmaster tools account.
  • Monthly checks and reviews of your site, including any selective resubmits or small changes, can be purchased for $40/mo. We would only recommend this after 3 months have passed from the original SEO work.

How Do We Achieve Good Search Engine Rankings?

There is no magical guarantee that will get you listed at the top of the search engines. If someone is telling you they can, be careful! If you pay them a lot of money you may get listed in the  get listed in the paid advertising section, but that is not a long term solution for most people.

These are the five main factors that the major search engines consider when ranking your site for competitive search terms. These key elements to good SEO have stayed constant. Don’t believe the hype that is written about SEO factors always changing.

1) Content: Content is king, having a site full of rich useful content is a must for a good search engine listing. You can’t expect to rank well on a certain phrase if your site doesn’t have content that includes those keywords. The more pages and the more content you have, the better.

2) Title: Your title is the single most important factor after good content. The title is the link that you see in the search engine results. If you have a site rich in content, but your title says something like “Home Page”, you are not going to get the results you are looking for.

3) Meta Description: Yes, this is still a very important tag to write and optimize for search engines. This is the summary of text that appears below your title in search results and google will use this text if it is relevant to the page, and written well.

4) Time: Any ethical SEO professional will tell you that a good listing is not going to happen overnight. Even if you have optimized your site properly, it’s still going to take time for the inbound links to increase and be recognized, for content to be indexed, etc… A promise of top rankings overnight or in 3 days is not possible unless you are using Pay-Per Click (PPC) ads or unethical techniques.

5) Inbound Links: The more links you have to your site the better. One way links are the best but reciprocal links with related or associated businesses are also useful. Remember you should NEVER get involved in link farms, or other linking scams, as these will hurt your listing or even get you blacklisted. If you create a quality site full of real content, and promote it properly, the links will accrue. It also helps to get involved in forums related to your industry where you can often add a link to your site as your signature when you post content. Another great way to increase your links is to find blogs related to your subject and try to become a guest author.

Bonus Tips
While the above information has always remained important and true, there are 2 new factors that have increased in importance over the last few years.

Tip #1) Make your whole website secure using an SSL certificate. We offer our hosting customers free SSL certificates by the LetsEncrypt program.

Tip #2) Optimize your site to load fast. This is now a fairly important ranking factor and should be given proper attention. This includes optimizing images, JavaScript, and CSS code as well as adding in cache plugins to improve your sites load time.