SEO – Search Engine Rankings
Due to the nature of search engine optimization, your SEO rankings may fluctuate regularly. However, keeping your placement on the first and second pages is one of our main goals. This is especially true early on in your SEO campaign; as a strategy is developed, competitors’ movements will be closely monitored. Observing and understanding any upward fluctuations (directly from SEO) will enable us to compete with–and ultimately beat–their progress.
How do search engines rank sites?
First, check out this brief article about How Search Engines Work. While calculating your page rankings, many factors (as discussed in the previously mentioned article) are taken into account. Smith-Digital uses their understanding of these calculations to increase your website ranking in search engines.
What kind of rankings can I expect?
With SEO, it is important to keep in mind that many will promise “first page rankings”, but few will deliver along with them long term, natural organic growth. This is especially true with companies that promote “Guaranteed First Page Rankings” but rarely promise long term growth. Smith-Digital uses acceptable techniques that include real optimization of content, links and other SEO-related data. Our goal is to have your site receiving first page rankings for most of your keywords and phrases.
How quickly can you improve my rankings?
The million dollar questions in SEO include “can you make my site rank on the first page”, “how quickly can you increase my rankings”, and so on. A true SEOer should include a timeline estimate within their proposal, as well as projected placement. However, guarantees of first-page rankings and overnight jumps in rank can be dangerous. Listen to this cautionary tale:
“Our website was ranking poorly in the United States. After doing little research, we decided to go with a company based in China. We were told briefly that our website would quickly increase in ranking based on specific keywords and phrases the company provided. Unfortunately, our website was soon banned from Google (with a “Possible Threat” notification attached. After discovering the tactics used by said company in China, we were appalled to find out that their tactics included many known “black hat” techniques; and, because of this, our business began to fare badly.”
Smith-Digital’s minimum time-frame for any search engine optimization campaign is three months, and suggest at least a one year campaign for new or recently established websites.
Can you use my existing website to increase my search engine rankings?
Existing websites can, for the most part, be structurally updated and optimized for a successful SEO campaign. These include websites programmed in HTML/CSS, PHP and other open-source platforms (like WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal). Smith-Digital does not normally promote full search engine optimization campaigns for full flash websites because of the limited amount of information search engines are able to extract from the flash (.SWF) files. However, sitemap.xml files and other META and link data can be incorporated to help these sorts of websites. It’s always a good idea to include yourself in free or open web directories and at least one Shopping directory.