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The Landscape of Search Engine Placement . . .
Forever Changing!

The science of creating a website that will place well within the results of a search engine is something that will always change. Every website owner wants to be at the top of the list when a viewer searches using any of the search engines. But how do you accomplish this? At first glance achieving this can seem like a game of cat and mouse; to a small extent this is true.

To help you understand what is involved here, you should first have a basic understanding of how the process works. To begin with in order for your website to stand any chance of being included in a search engine's database, they must first know you are there.

There are two basic ways this is accomplished. Submit your website to the top search engines (ie. Google and Yahoo) and many of the other smaller and/or specialized search engines. Or having the search engine "discover" your website all by itself. A search engine can, and eventually will, discover your website by following a link from someone else's website. (Keep reading you will figure out how this is possible later in the article.)

The discovery phase is only the beginning. Once they know you are there the search engines must determine where to place your website within the results of a keyword search. This is where it really gets tricky! They use two avenues to accomplish this, an editorial review and the mathematical algorithm.

• Editorial review: A person sits down and reviews your website. They closely examine the website's content and decide how relevant the website is to certain keywords.
• Algorithms: An automated software program (often referred to as a spider) crawls through your website extracting data and running it through complicated mathematical algorithms to determine how relevant your website is to certain keywords. Once the spider has landed on one of your pages it will follow all the links to your other pages and other websites that you link to.

So much for letting them know you are there. Now it is time to optimize your website, that is get it ready to be reviewed by the search engines. (In real life you want this to be done before you let the search engines know you are there.)
Here in a nut shell is what needs to be done.

• Identify your keywords: Figure out which keywords your perfect customer will use to search for your website.
• Optimize your website: Using your in depth understanding of the ranking process, optimize your website for these keywords.
  • Create meta tags within the code of your website using these keywords.
  • Write good quality content for each page that appropriately uses the keywords that relate to the content of the page.
  • Add to and change the content on the website as often as possible, don't let it go "stale".
• Generate Interest: Get other websites to link into yours. Be careful as to who links to your website, the search engines will reward you for quality inbound links and penalize you for poor inbound links.

The search engines understand that they produce a product of value to their customers. They know that when we search for something on the web we don't want to sort through a bunch of junk! We want to get a relevant list of quality websites that will meet our needs. They work very hard to do this.

Now it is time to start playing cat and mouse. There are some unscrupulous people out there that either have terrible websites or they don't want to work at achieving high placement. They cheat! The search engines know this and make changes to how they rank websites in an effort to trip these despicable people up.

When they make these changes they release some of the details and closely guard the rest. This way the cheaters have to spend a lot of time and effort figuring out how to work around the new system. At the same time, anyone willing to work with the search engines will be rewarded with high rankings.

Their basic rules that really don't change are simply this:

• Provide accurate content that is relevant.
• Keep the content current and up to date.
• Do not try to cheat.

The trick here is to stay in the loop and keep current with what is going on within the search engine industry. Pay attention to what they tell you and abide by their rules. Yes, it does mean that the job of optimizing a website is never done, but you do not necessarily need to spend a significant portion of your life worrying about it either.

How often to optimize your website really depends upon your business and the value your website has to it within your marketing plan. A business that is strictly an online entity will undoubtedly put a great deal of effort and resources into SEO. At the other end of the spectrum, a business that does not rely on the internet to produce the bulk of it's sales may only work on SEO annually, quarterly, or semi annually.

The best advice I can give you is to use the services of a professional. They will know what may get you into trouble and steer you away from it. Provide quality content that is of value, keep it honest, and enjoy the rewards that go along with it.

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Some of Our Current
Clients

• 3-D CNC *
• ATHC
• BigBoysBid.com
• Dominion Realty
• Fitzloff Photography
• Szachowicz, MD - Facial Plastic Surgery*
• Girl Scouts Peacepipe Council*
• Gull Lake Campground
• Hutch Sport Shop
• Innovative Audio Inc.
• Jay Malone Motors
• Marceau Drafting
• McLeod Alliance for Victims of Domestic Violence*
• Minnesota Valley Investments
• Name Your Frame & Photography*
• Oakdale Golf Club
• Peterson Juergensen
  Hemmerick & Co.
  (In development)
• Picture the Pages
• Platinum Media Design*
• Professional Training Services
• Rental Link.com *
• Schweiss Bifold Doors*
• SpamKillerNow.com
• Storms Welding

Note: Clients without a link are
under construction.

*Denotes Clients using our hosting services for websites previously designed with another developer.

Get to Know Your Neighbors*

P&D Builders   Local builders highly skilled in Remodeling, New Construction, and Commercial construction. Visit their website and view the gallery showing some of their impressive work.

Additional Links of Interest *

Worldbook Encyclopedia  This website offers you a variety of information, of course you will get the most out of it by subscribing.

NASA for Kids   This is a great site geared towards kids and their interests in outer space.

* By providing these links we are not endorsing the services or products being offered. We are only offering links to other websites that may be of interest to you.

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