StormBiz Blog

What Could Be Worse Than Your Viewers Not Seeing Your Site Display Properly?

Correct HTML

What if they never get to your site to see it?

If you want your site listed on search engines then make sure that you have correct HTML code. Many search engines cannot properly catalog or index a site that has HTML errors. This can greatly reduce the amount of traffic your web site receives from search engines.

The lowest form of "browser" out there is the search engine. The search engine is about the equivalent of a version 2 browser. It can't read flash, DHTML, JavaScript, dynamic pages, - even having trouble at times with frames. Search engines may have difficulty crawling, indexing, and extracting the content of your site if you have broken HTML.

Search engines score a page by looking for relevant terms in key HTML components in specific places within a document. These key components are titles, descriptions, visible text, alt image tags etc. If they don't find them because of typos or other mistakes, the spiders may leave without reading the content of the page.

Poor document structure like a META tag placed in the BODY section of the page instead of the HEAD section - can cause the spider to ignore the tag and cost you a good ranking.

Search Engine Optimization ConceptWhat if you were tired and under deadline to get a new page up, (Not at my job!) you might type TILTE instead of TITLE for your TITLE tag. TITLE tags are very important to search engines. If you made this one little error the search engine will ignore all of the content of the title tag.

If you create the page properly and have content that contains your keywords it "should" get read and picked up by the search engines. (off page factors like inbound links excluded) However if you have a simple error like an open tag

S.E.O. ProcessInternet Explorer is very forgiving of mistakes in code. By building only for IE you are creating for the most error forgiving browser ever. Thinking that a search engine will "browse" your site like Internet Explorer 6 is a dream. If the site won't display right in Netscape, Firefox, Opera or an old version of IE chances are good the search engines can't read it either.

So next time you get frustrated with having to design for Netscape, Firefox, Opera and IE, just bust out your favorite HTML editor and settle in for a long night of code checking.

Your marketing department will thank you!

Contact us for a free quotation today

Good KeywordsAn investment with a high return. The returns can be truly stupendous when you get it right.

Maybe you have noticed that certain keywords have great conversion rates, yet you only rank on page 2 on Google. You need to lift your ranking to the top 3 spots on page 1 to have any satisfaction, and true return on your modest investment into SEO.

If you are serious about your business and are investing thousands on marketing offline, in newspapers etc., the time has arrived when you should definitely consider investing in professional SEO.

Here are some important reasons to consider about Professional SEO

1. It still works – First and foremost, the techniques employed to improve SEO still work. “As long as you are focusing on optimal user experience while performing methodic SEO strategies, you will be rewarded with higher positioning and organic traffic."
2. It is not going to stop working any time soon – Based on the way search engines appear to be developing, it is not likely that SEO will cease to be effective any time in the foreseeable future. Your business depends on keywords, the same as traditional text-based content. This link ensures continued success of SEO techniques as long as it exists
3. It is cost-effective – Compared to the costs associated with other forms of online marketing such as PPC advertising, social media marketing, or purchasing leads for an email marketing program. SEO provides fairly good ROI, so your organic SEO in many ways remains the bedrock of your online presence
Organic S.E.O4. Search engines grabbing more market share – Somewhere between 80-90% of customers now check online reviews prior to making a purchase, and this number is only expected to increase. It won’t be long before virtually everyone is searching for products and services online. Without organic SEO in place, people will have a very hard time finding you, and will instead find your competitors.
5. Rise of mobile bandwidth, and local search optimization –With this dramatic explosion in mobile usage, a whole new world of effective SEO techniques have opened up for companies, such as local search optimization.
6. Not having a healthy content profile is damaging – With each and every update to its search algorithm, Google and other engines change the way they look at websites. Things which didn’t exist a few years ago, such as social media indicators, are now given fairly high importance in terms of their impact on your rankings. Not building a healthy content profile, spread out over months and years, is potentially damaging to your business, as it is one of the factors Google evaluates when looking at your site.
7. Your competitors are doing it – Remember, SEO is a never-ending process. If you’re not moving forward, and improving your position, you’re losing ground to a competitor who is. That’s a simple fact of how the process works. Don’t let your competitors out manoeuvre you by ignoring this valuable tool for your business.

Your business definitely needs to have an SEO strategy in place, if you are interested in succeeding in terms of online marketing; it remains one of the single most important components of any organization’s branding efforts, and online presence.

Please feel free to leave comments in the reviews on this page.

If you need a free quotation or would like to discuss your requirements, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Rich Man You must have heard the stories how people became rich and famous with their websites. How could they achieve this? Their websites took a first position in search engine listings, targeting popular keywords. Sounds easy, right? Wrong! To be honest, chances for a regular small business website to get to the top of the search engine listings are close to zero, and each day they become smaller and smaller, as a number of new and old websites grow.

Let's examine the situation from the beginning. Search engines just need your content to deliver it to searchers. If a searcher is happy with the search result from the particular search engine, he will come back, and use this search engine again. Do not think that search engines serve to send customers to your website. They DO NOT CARE about your website or your business. All they need is content.

When the search engines first appeared on the Internet, they needed help to determine what your site is about, and how relevant your website is to search queries. People used "Keyword" meta-tags in those days. Keywords gave too many opportunities to cheat with search engines results, so searchers were not happy with their search queries results. Same thing was with the search engines. Manipulation with a website position in the search engines listings became known as Search Engine Optimization. That was the time when you could actually wake up a rich man, after the search engine came to your website, included it into its database and started sending you thousands of customers.

SEO PlanningUnfortunately, not many Search Engine Optimization companies know what this involves. You may see a "one size fits all" package, link popularity development in the form of submitting to link farms, or even the dreaded "Submit Your Site to 1000's of Search Engines" scam. While the basic premise of each of these ideas is true, the execution of them is extremely important.

First of all, your web site needs human attention. A real person should thoroughly analyze your site before any work is done. Get them on the phone and ask them questions. There should be a clear process that the Search Engine Optimization Company uses and tailors to each client. The SEO company should also have a clear idea of what your goals are for your web site.

The first step in any work that is done should be keyword research. Like any kind of advertising, you need to know where your target market goes, and how they find businesses like yours. The keywords chosen should apply to the theme of the web site. High rankings for these keywords should also be obtainable given your budget. If you are a computer repair shop with one or two locations in a city, and cannot service computers outside your area, then targeting a term such as "computer repair" is overkill. The cost for obtaining high rankings for a term such as that, will be far greater than what you will make from the exposure, as much of your web site traffic will not be targeted enough.

Puzzled Man

Some clients have problems understanding why a site optimization is needed on their brand new website. Why put more time and money in a site they just developed with us, a site that looks and works just like they wanted it to.

All websites we build nowadays have a basic optimization built in from the start, without using frames, and other things that will hurt the chances to get a high ranking. You can say it’s like building a new house. You have to pre-install all water pipes and electrical wiring, long before you add wallpaper, painting, and finishing up. But to get the kitchen and bathroom working, you have to do a few more installations after the paint is dry, and the house seems ready to move into. You also have to install lights, heating etc.

That is easy to understand for most of us, and the same way all wiring and water pipes are invisible inside the walls and floor, it is the same for the pre-SEO works, invisible behind your websites final design, and functions. But to get the site ready for the wide world, we need to add a few more working hours.