Here’s my typical response to those questions, using a recent example of a downtown manhattan cocktail bar seeking to get better search engine rankings:

Technically speaking, I believe that search engine optimization should simply be avoided. To put it in the words of Google (paraphrased): do not optimize your web site for search engines but optimize your content for visitors.

 

The best way to get good rankings is to provide quality content that draws visitors. Once visitors are drawn, search engines will follow. Organic search results will follow the organic growth of a web site which will yield long-term success and “safe results”, i.e. your ranking will likely stay the same, even when search engine algorithms change. By using shady techniques and optimization tools, web sites run the risk of being penalized or lose their ranking quickly.

 

SEO starts with a good web site.

 

That, of course, includes proper code, standards compliancy and, put simply, common sense: File names, page titles and directory structures should be self-explanatory and not misleading. Again, quality content is key!  If users find your site via search engines, they should be satisfied with the results (= your content). This requires most attention be paid to the choice of keywords and key phrases for your site. Any SEO strategy should be built around a very few keywords and phrases which are targeted specifically to your site’s content.

 

Personally, I try to choose key phrases that are very specific – and might not always be the most popular – but yield fewer search results and disappointments (Example: “new york cocktail bar” yields 462,000 google results while “manhattan cocktail bar” yields 291,000. Therefore, your site would have less competition using “manhattan cocktail bar” and probably satisfy more visitors).

 

Keywords/phrases must, of course, appear on most pages of your site and should be used for incoming links whenever possible (i.e. when other web sites link to yours, the link text should reflect those keywords/phrases. Example: “check out this downtown manhattan cocktail bar“ is much better than “check out example.com“ !!! Both link to the same site but the first actually spells out the crucial keywords/phrase in the text of the link).

 

Obviously, incoming links should be one of the top priorities. Another is to frequently update the content. Search engines crawl web sites continuously and new content should remain relevant and focused. Both of these tasks might be the responsibility of the site owner which is to say that SEO is an ongoing process that involves a few resources to succeed.

 

For our part, pirocmedia simply follows google’s recommendations and provides the service of developing the web site according to those recommendations. In a sense, our SEO services are free…