SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION QUESTIONS

True Optimization Involves Every Aspect of Your Web Site Including Usability Issues Like The Menu System, Placement of Your Site's Search Box, Size of Important Links, The Kind of Words Used in Descriptions, and the Actual Layout of the HTML Code on the Pages. Some of the Most Important Questions Below Involve Making Your Site Easier to Use and Keeping a User on Your Site Long Enough (or Short Enough) For Them to Make a Purchase.

Q: Will my pages open quickly for MODEM users?

A: Yes. In 2006 34% of Americans were still using dial-up access. Some areas of the country simply do not yet support high speed internet. Large un-optimized graphics are the primary cause of many problems MODEM users face. In most cases, sites that take more than 5 seconds for pages to open are abandoned by visitors who don't have the patience to stick around. These are called "bounces", and are measured as "bounce rates".

Q: How does "bounce rate" effect my site performance?

A: Google Analytics is a wonderful webmaster tool that allows tracking of all kinds of visitors for all sorts of things including providing "bounce rates". In most cases where sites are slow to open for MODEMs, bounce rates are low for Cable and T1 high speed visitors, but become increasingly high for DSL and (up to 100%) for MODEM users. Thus sites getting a lot of hits from MODEM users will experience serious bounce rates and lost visitors, and therefore a great deal of potential lost revenue. This high bounce rate can be reduced significantly through various technical means including: pre-loading images from the site on an early page, reducing the "pixel weight" and size of the images that must be shown, and adding secondary image links to open larger pictures in their own windows to provide MODEM users with the best of both worlds. In addition, I-Frames can be used for slow loading content such as videos so that MODEM users can still view the entire page without any "freezing" effect, even though they may not be able to see the video itself.

Q: How long will it take search engines to put me at the top in Google?

A: This varies greatly depending on many factors including how many well optimized sites are on the web run by your competition. It also depends on the search spider cycle of Google, Yahoo and MSN etc. They may not send a spider to index your site for up to two whole months. However, in one case where a friend needed a site in "one day" to come up at the top in Google, I was able to take his existing page with essentially nothing on it, build a whole site in 24 hours, and through exceedingly good luck, have it indexed and place first in Google the very next day. Luck plays a role - but good solid back-link search engine optimization strategy is the number one key to assure success. By the way, Google now has 63% of the search engine share!

Q: What is your history?

A: I come from a certified Network Engineering / Data Communications and CISCO routers background. This formal education in networking is the foundation knowledge of the seven layer Open Systems Interconnect protocol standard for how the internet actually works.

Q: How long have you been building web sites?

A: Although I built my first company intranet web site in 2001, my company started building web sites professionally for the public in 2004. As web building was demanded more and more, my focus shifted in this direction and has finally become what I consider to be my strongest point of interest. Web design and SEO work are constantly and intensely fascinating and engage my intellect on a daily basis, even in my dreams.

Q: What makes you right for the job of building my website?

A: I possess some proprietary knowledge beyond what most web development firms do. In 2006 I was contracted by one of Hernando County's boards to evaluate several web development firms contract proposals to build one of the County web sites. The firms that handed in bids were Aristotle Interactive, Miles Media, CBVTV, Media Tech Productions, CivicPlus and two others. With close to 400 pages of technical data, sample websites, charts, graphs, and multiple proprietary proofs of how each company was prepared to optimize a site for maximum visitation and return on investment, I gained an immense advantage over any and all competition not privileged or capable of understanding this data, and was able to study and implement this new information in sites I built provided that the extra work was compensated for. When I was still under contract with the County I prepared in depth analysis reports (costs benefits etc.) of the three leading contenders after we dismissed four of the proposals. As a result of the extensive research and comparative analyses performed, I now possess a cross section of competitive wisdom otherwise unobtainable from any one source. Each of the newfound bits of wisdom presented new questions and searches for more answers. As time went by, the natural progression toward focusing on Search Engine Optimization and copywriting has led to the current direction I've taken to help assure your business' online growth and success.

Q: How much will I be charged for hosting? What is hosting?

A: Hosting is really just "disk space" provided for your web site. When I took over one site (now managed by me) the owner was being charged $200 per month for hosting about eight pages. I contacted the hosting company and threatened to move their site, and the hosting company reduced hosting to $30, immediately saving the site owners over $2,000 a year. Most hosting packages today allow a fairly good amount of space, but I will be happy to host your entire site free of charge. If you should stop using my services (as in hiring someone else to take over your site) you will be expected to move your site and have it hosted elsewhere. This is for security purposes as the hosting cPanel login area is only able to be administered by one account login (mine) and permitting anyone else to log into the control panel would put all of my other clients at severe risk.

Q: If you host our site, then doesn't that put you in total control of our web name?

A: No. Not the name, just the files on the site, and they are your files, not mine, available to you at any time and for any reason. Your web name or "domain name" will always be separate, and always belongs to you. I can host your entire site, and if you wanted to switch to another webmaster's services tomorrow, it would be quite easy to transfer all of the files over to the new host with only a few minutes of website downtime if any. I give hosting away free primarily as a convenience to both you and me. It provides an additional benefit to you because there's no annual bill involved, and it benefits me because I have a nice cPanel (control panel) which is quite advanced. It's a win/win situation for both of us.

Q: Is it true we have "unlimited" email addresses?

A: Yes. Unlimited means just that. There may be a limit somewhere - but since you're unlikely to require more than a thousand email addresses for your company (and if you did you would probably need a web development firm so large that it would be departmentalized) we'll never find out.

Q: How about hosting space? How much room do we have?

A: Ten Gigabytes - though most sites are nowhere nearly this huge. If for some strange reason your site was larger than 10 GB my guess (I've never seen one that big) is I could give it to you. Most page files are not very large - even with pictures - or most people wouldn't stay on your site because the pages would open too slowly. Therefore a site with a thousand pages will not even be close to reaching any sort of imaginary limit. Again, rest assured, you'll always have as much space as you'll need - even it were to go over ten gigabytes in size.

Q: How fast will you perform updates?

A: Page changes don't take long, usually in a few days - but emergency changes can be made immediately even while you speak to me on the phone if I'm at my computer. More involved updates requiring new pages, pictures, links, service and product descriptions etc. can take up to a week or more, depending on the complexity and number of updates. In many cases, the general page additions and links can be created right away, with more detailed fill-in work progressing over time until completion.

Q: What about ongoing maintenance?

A: Ongoing maintenance is required and provided for a monthly fee. Often a site has explanations with links that open to other web sites as a service to your website visitors providing them with additional information or resources they feel are of value. At times these links fail because the sites in question, or the pages the links point to change (or become deleted) in such a way that the links are no longer functional. I use software on a regular basis that checks your site for broken links, and then go in and manually correct or remove the page links. Maintenance also involves product and service descriptions, keywords, key-phrases and associated terms used by you and your competition.

Q: You mention "each new phase of optimization". Will this cost me more money?

A: Yes, but once you have had a site that is fully and properly optimized and see first hand how your sales rise, you'll see that the cost of doing business over the internet is two thirds cheaper than doing business in person. Once you realize that fact you'll gladly pay to re-optimize. You can always throw an additional $249 (Business Plan - 100 Social Networks), $349 (Corporate Plan150 Social Networks) or $649 (Enterprise Plan - 300 Social Networks) toward full signup with confirm emails, uploaded photos, bios, and all details for (respectively) up to 300 Social Network profiles. With each ongoing push in optimization your site will rank better for more terms. Social media is what Web 2.0 is all about - user generated content, interaction between people on the web and putting your best foot forward in your personal or professional profile on the web. It does take work. Someone's got to be "home" so to speak when visitors start showing up in the profiles. The more active you are, the better your chances become.

Q: What about tracking?

A: I use two trackers at once in many cases. One is "SiteMeter" - a very commonly used tracker that shows realtime results for who is currently on your site, how long they have been there, what page they arrived on, what page they have clicked out on, what page they were on when they left the site, what their location is within the world and a whole lot of other information. I also use the Google Analytics tracker. This is a far more advanced tracker that uses multiple comparative screens and provides information on keyword tracking, bounce rates, etc. It does not provide real-time information though - so it is more useful for long-term trend analysis.

Q: Will tracking reports and analysis be provided to me?

A: Yes, if your company is capable of using the analysis provided and further dividing and analyzing it to take advantage of developing trends. The raw data will be available and accessible to you for free any time. Your marketing and sales department and other department heads may well be able to make very good predictions for you based on the figures provided, particularly if they have an MBA, a degree in Computer Science, or a degree in Statistical Analysis.

Q: What is the "up" time for my web site? I've heard 99.9% is a good figure.

A: Different hosting companies promise 99.9% uptime. In general many of the better hosting companies do provide excellent uptime. The hosting company I currently use is now ranked #2 in the field, and ranked #1 just a year ago. Live telephone and online support is provided 24-7-365, with very short wait times if any. You can expect few if any problems with your site. I have moved hosting four times in order to find one as good and reliable as my present hosting service. Less experienced web development firms are often happy with far worse service. You won't find that here. Redundant servers, large un-interrupted power supplies, diesel or gasoline backup generators, and secondary internet links for fail-over provide the best assurances that your site will stay online. These conditions are currently met by my hosting provider.

Q: So what are the actual costs involved in building a site with you?

A: There are essential and unavoidable costs associated with Search Engine Optimization involving third parties. The money you pay for these things does NOT go to me, it goes to third party contractors working at discount rates, or to the Yahoo! Directory. Those costs are fixed:

$299 annually for the Yahoo Directory, and
$249 to $649 for social media profile setup plus any monthly added fees (call for details).

Your site (not including the above optimization), paid to me will start at:

A minimum of $2,000 for a working site with not too much optimized competition running against you (There stiffer the competition, the more work it takes to beat them over time). On average though expect to have a budget of approximately $5,000, even though you likely won't need to spend it all, just to be sure in order to get your site done right with a decent degree of optimization, copywriting and external link work included.

If you're going e-commerce with a shopping cart, and you already have a merchant account, cart button configuration and added coding can vary based on the number of individual pages on your site. This does not have to be expensive but it depends on the type of cart you plan to add. Some businesses use a PayPal shopping cart, others use Mal's E Cart (Free because it uses your existing merchant account - but able to easily be upgraded as business increases, and a third party plugin works to handle exact shipping rates based on carrier, weight and zip code destination), there is also Google Pay and and there are a large number of advanced 3rd party solutions that can be integrated into your site, each one priced differently.

Q: Can I join the Yahoo! Directory on my own?

A: You can try, but there are certain conditions that must be met on your website or they will reject your site and keep your $299.00. No all Flash index pages allowed. Unless your site is correctly coded, with no broken links and no pages under construction, your site will be denied. Links don't just include page links. I use a program to search any and all hidden site links including links to missing images. The webmaster has to set these up correctly and test each one to make certain they work. If you already have a site and are thinking of submitting it on your own, I can run a search and create a detailed report of all your broken and missing links for you to give to your webmaster to fix. There are other requirements spelled out on the directory submission page you and your webmaster should read just to make sure you aren't disqualified. Call 352 232-1678 and ask for a site broken site-link report for $50. It will save you hundreds.

Q: How many #1 Google rankings have you obtained key phrases with over 50 million pages in the Google Index?

A: This is a bizarre trick question I've included here from another SEO site. Have I ever ranked on the first page of Google against over 50,000,000 web sites? Sure. Here's a search engine optimization pdf - out of 55,000,000 results for the search term computer web site, Brooksville ranks 8th on the first page, and by adding a single word - coming up on page one in Google against 44,000,000 competing web sites*. All anyone has to do to "prove" they have ranked for key phrases in searches with 50 million results or more is check their site meter referrals every day. Eventually all kinds of first page in Google results will show up. I had one show up on the first page of over 500,000,000 results and another client's web site showed up on page one against 110,000,000 competing pages. It's exciting to me when you make more sales, so even if your product shows up on page one against only 200,000 competing pages and they buy your product then it makes me happier than if you show up page one against 100,000,000 pages but they don't buy from you.

Q: How soon before I can expect my site to start making sales?

A: It depends. Some experts say that if you expect to make a return on your investment in six months to a year you're deluding yourself. Others say that if you're lucky and know how to set up Pay Per Click correctly and have the right product with low enough priced keywords you might make money almost right away (but at the same time they warn that's not usually the case). Pay Per Click services focus on selling you ads, so they don't focus on how many people actually lose money, and they never mention that click fraud schemes are running rampant - Google WANTS more sites than just their own search engine to carry your ads, so they allow almost any site to include Google AdSense Pages. Automated software exists to build hundreds or even thousands of pages with content and Google Adsense built in - and your ads are then placed in them by Google. Why is this not a good thing? Many site visitors who like the articles they are reading know that if they click on a Pay Per Click ad, it will "tip" the webmaster because Google pays the webmaster for each ad that is clicked on his or her site. This is part of the click fraud problem. The good news is that you don't HAVE to permit ads anywhere else but on actual search page results, and most ads result in sales primarily from search pages anyway. Click here to read the answer to the question: "I am a pay-per-click advertiser. How come my clicks don't turn into sales?"

Q: Where does the site content in the above examples automated software come from?

A: They come from your own (and others) efforts to build a fully optimized site with external links pointing back to it! That's right - part of building a properly optimized site means submitting interesting articles to "free" web publishing sites in order to be rewarded with a link back to your own site. Well, in some cases these articles are also on sites that allow them to be shared and reproduced as "reader content" on other web sites. The above mentioned automatic software scours thousands of free article databases and takes this free content and uses it on AdSense pages - so if you submit articles and at the same time pay for Google Ad Words Pay Per Click, your ads could very well one day show up on someone else's site with your article on it, paying the person who put it there. If you use Pay Per Click, stick to keeping it on the search engine results only by choosing "Content-Match PPC" and not "Contextual PPC". Also make sure, if you have a local business and don't ship products that you choose Geo-targeted PPC so you only put Pay Per Click ads in your region, and not throughout the whole country.

Q: Do you prefer to start with paid search or natural search?

A: Paid is preferable in the beginning using a wide variety of key phrases (one expert says "at least in the hundreds") and tracking the results for about three days on a key phrase by key phrase basis. By starting with Paid Search, explicit data can be gained and used to target key phrases for a natural SEO campaign. Many website owners do not like Pay Per Click paid search because it can become expensive over time, but for a short period of a month or two, it can be quite useful. Paid search does not provide any permanent search engine results and is not a good long term solution because situations outside of your control can change your fortunes quickly. Any new market using your keywords could quickly double, triple or more multiply your cost per click prices. In many cases though, running a Paid Search campaign is a good idea at the start to help SEO efforts get started on the right track for your type of business more cheaply.

Q: It can take up to one or two years for my web site to start making sales???

A: Sure. You're business may have been in existence for 10 or 20 years already, but your online brand new domain name has just arrived on the scene, and the age of a web site is important - people know you, trust you and long term clients will start buying from you online right away. But the first two years are always the leanest in any brand new businesses until people can find and grow comfortable that you're not a fly-by-night here today and gone tomorrow. Proper optimization will definitely kick start the process though because good optimization includes press releases, published articles, an e-newsletter signup form for email marketing, and public relations pieces placed on social media sites. With full optimization in place and your copywriting pointing out the benefits of all of the features of your goods and services - your sales will increase to the point where you're wondering if you'll have to rent a building, add employees and set up a separate shipping and receiving department the same as www.homeatsea.com* finally had to do after they performed full optimization. They also wisely attended many trade shows handing out literature with their web site address on it, and worked many other events to get more widely known - but make no mistake about it, it took them two years before they made their first sale. Could it have happened for them sooner? Possibly. Some businesses succeed more quickly than others. But know that if there is a magic bullet, and its called search engine optimization. Just don't hold back - if you get a good SEO who knows what he or she is doing and provides you with step by step project completions and proofs, accept the fact that it is working and continuing to move forward. A little faith and it will work. (*Home at Sea is undergoing restructuring & has not had their server online recently).

ACCORDING TO BRUCE CLAY (http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/rates.htm) (His site comes up first in Google for the term "Search Engine Optimization": "In any case, it is prudent to assume that it will take months to develop a competent site and to promote it properly. If you are looking for a positive cash flow from the Web in under six months, you will probably be disappointed. We suggest that you have patience with this project, that you have staying power (financially), and that you be dedicated to properly implementing a successful Web strategy. It is not uncommon for a site to take over a year to generate a living for the small business owner doing it themselves, so have a backup plan at all times!"

What Bruce Clay says about being dedicated to implementing a successful web strategy means being able to provide written pieces on occasion such as e-newsletters for email marketing campaigns, articles for submission to e-magazines, press releases and finally, engaging genuinely in relevant social media site discussions and leaving traces back to your own web site.

Q: You mentioned Search Engine Optimization and Web Design. What if I already have a site? Do I have to give up my current webmaster so you can take it over?

A: NO! This is not desirable unless the site is a total mess. It may look like the prettiest site in the world, but it can still be a logistical nightmare. Recently a friend of mine recommended that I take a look at another friend's website to see what I could do to optimize it. The site has a very interesting main index page created with Flash. But it has no searchable text on the first page, no sitemap page with links to the rest of the site, 48 orphaned pages with no links pointing anywhere, and none of the 48 orphaned pages (full of nice pictures) has either an address or a phone number - or any meta-tags, headlines, or anything else of use to the search engines. Furthermore, on these orphaned pages, even the name of the company is just a jpeg image! Again, unreadable at present even by Google! That site has got to be completely gutted and rebuilt in its entirety. I'm afraid to ask what that site had cost.

The above scenario is the exception, not the rule. Now, just take an average bad site. Often times the coding headaches dealing with taking over someone else's style of site building are the equivalent of building a site from scratch. One SEO firm describes their experience as "We have, however, been hired to clean up the messes of other SEO firms." I prefer a more diplomatic description of their work. My preferred procedure in that case is to take on the role of consultant - to analyze the various pages and put suggested improvements in writing for the webmaster/SEO to follow, and then for me to take on the job of submitting your site to the thousands of second tier directories and perform the other "off-site" back link creation duties typically associated with modern Search Engine Optimization. As SEO and Web Site Designer are two different full time jobs, you can give the SEO part to me, and keep your current webmaster who may be perfectly good doing site work once given a good set of rules to work with. There is thus no need to have to pay twice for your existing site if you can avoid it - and by working with me as your consultant, your current webmaster will actually become more competent and be able to apply the knowledge to the rest of his web sites and do a much better job.

Q: You mentioned "Page Rank Leaking", what is that?

A: Page rank leak is a complex concept whereby each link you place on your website indicates a "vote" from any page on your site to any other linked page (either on your own website or on someone else's). When you place links to your interior pages you're splitting your vote in multiple directions. When you have a link to other web sites anywhere on your site, and in most cases particularly when they are on the first page of your site, you are diluting your own interior pages worth and reducing their rank in the search engines. There are various means of building links to avoid this problem (some use 302 redirects, others use nofollow link attributes etc.). All of this is coded within the page's html, and none of it is visible to anyone casually visiting your site who does not have an interest in your source code.

Q: What is "source code"?

A: Source code is the html (Hypertext Markup Language) programming language that websites are made out of that is converted into web pages, and http (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol - the thing always typed or implied before the "www") is the means by which web pages are conducted over the internet to reach your web browser and be converted into meaningful format, text and images (along with hidden text area attributes to better inform the search engines about the focus of each page's content). Along with HTML source code, javascript (the king of scripting languages used in source code today) is also often embedded in your pages. This code is non-readable by search engines and depending upon its placement within the page, javascript can foul up your search results and ranking.

Q: It sounds way too complicated, and I wouldn't know if someone I hired to build me a good site was really doing his job right - how do I get a correctly built site that's "optimization ready" and qualified to gain access to things like the Yahoo Directory and Open Directory Project, the worlds leading directories?

A: (Commercial here) You might begin by calling me at (352) 232-1678 for an in depth free consultation. You won't be directed to a sales rep, then a webmaster, and finally someone from billing. Your questions, all of them, will be directly answered by me. During the development stage many competing websites will be researched not for the prettiness of the sites, but for their overall effectiveness in drawing site visitors and clients. The site design (link strategy, keywords in links, external site back-links) and many other factors will be carefully considered and researched to provide you with an in depth and individual report, and a plan for a site that works best in accordance with what works best in your industry, geographic location, and with your products and services.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION QUESTIONS

What people ask (and need to know) when having a website built.Key Facts you should know about Search Engine Optimization.

What people ask (and need to know) when having a website built.
Key Facts you should know about Search Engine Optimization.