Search Engine Marketing SEO / Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization or SEO is actually a poorly chosen term for what we do. Altech Technology Concepts does not optimize search engines – engines like Google and Bing won't let us near their servers.  We optimize clients’ web sites to ensure high natural rankings on the various search engines.

Having a website that ranks highly on the search engines for the exact terms that potential clients are typing into the search engines is a powerful form of marketing (1). It puts products and services in front of customers at the exact point that they are doing pre-purchase research.

A Keyword strategy is vital. A florist's website which ranks highly for a generic term such as "flowers" may generate a lot of traffic but very few sales as there are many reasons for searchers to be looking for the word "flowers" other than making a purchase such as looking for information on flower shows, gardening or even flower arranging.  However, a site that ranks highly for a term such as "buy flowers online" will generate a lot of sales and therefore improve the company’s bottom line because the searcher has indicated the intent to buy and is practically sitting in front of the monitor, credit card in hand, begging to make a purchase.

For most web designers and developers, SEO is a mysterious and unknown quantity.  The search engines change and upgrade their algorithms (the formulas used to rank websites) so often that 99.9% of the "How To" information available on the Internet is outdated and useless within a few months of being published and any printed books about SEO are likely to be dangerously out of date by the time they hit the shelves.

Not only are the search engines highly protective of their proprietary algorithms, but the fact that these algorithms are in a constant state of flux means that nobody can ever know the precise criteria for attaining a high natural page ranking at any given time.  The incorrect implementation of even the most innocent of tactics may result in huge penalties in the rankings, sometimes even resulting in a site being banned and dropped from the search engines all together. To be considered an expert in search engine optimization, a SEO company must continually monitor the search engines and the search industry as a whole to have the speed and dexterity to implement any necessary changes immediately.

There are many web design and web development companies who claim to do SEO and build "search engine friendly websites", but all too often they only have a rudimentary grasp of SEO - meta tags, title tags, keyword density. These basic considerations should be naturally implemented as a matter of course by any developer worth his salt. Search engine optimization is not a one-time task implemented at the time of development. It is a continuous, ongoing job requiring a dedicated effort with constant research and development.

SEO (search engine optimization) for your website.

• Beware of anybody guaranteeing search engine positions. The speed with which the search engines change coupled with new search innovations such as personalized search and geo search means that nobody can guarantee a #1 ranking.

• Beware of anybody promising an increase in "hits". Hits are a completely different metric to unique visitors, are easily faked and have no correlation to increased income.

• Avoid dealing with companies that insinuate that they have insider information on the workings of search engines or claim to have "undetectable" ways of tricking the search engines  - these services can do immeasurable harm to your website and company image.

• Insist on understanding what key words and phrases are being targeted - and why. Ranking for terms that are too generic or too obscure is a waste of time and resources because they will not increase your bottom line.

• Look out for companies that insist on submitting your site to the search engines (some companies even charge for this non-service!) Properly designed websites that are correctly rolled out and announced will automatically be found, spidered (have all the pages "read") and indexed by all the major search engines.

• DO NOT respond to spam emails selling SEO services..."Dear yoursite.com, I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

• DO NOT respond to spam emails offering to "submit your site to 10 000 search engines". There aren't 10 000 search engines in existence! The major search engines - Google, Yahoo/Bing, Ask and AOL account for 99.9999% of all searches done online (about 8,608,488,000 unique searches per month world wide - about 50,000,000 per month in South Africa). These spam offerings will submit your site to thousands of worthless pages (known as FFA sites or LinkFarms) which can harm you rankings.

• Make sure that the company you use work within the webmaster guidelines set out by Google and the other search engines.

How we optimize web pages for high rankings on the search engines.

We use an array of highly sophisticated tools to ascertain exactly which keywords and search terms are used most often in searching for products and services in a client’s niche or industry. We then select the terms that are most likely to be "buying terms" rather than "research" or "navigation" terms. In other words we select the keywords and phrases that will best generate business and monetize the website.

By reworking a site's content and navigational architecture. Altech Technology Concepts ensure that the search engines consider the site to be more valuable and relevant to potential clients and customers than competitor sites. The search engines will reward the site with a higher ranking in the searches. Altech Technology Concepts also uses a number of sophisticated and legitimate"white hat" techniques (techniques which comply with the search engine's webmaster terms of service) to acquire hundreds, and eventually thousands of high quality, one way inbound links from authorative high PR (Google Page Rank) sites.

We continually monitor the search space to ensure that we target the most popular search terms and phrases relevant to our client’s businesses and keep abreast of any new keywords in their industry. The word "iPhone" didn't exist until mid 2007. Today it is one of the most searched phrases on the Internet. Any cell phone themed website is losing thousands of potential customers by not targeting that term in the search rankings!

In addition, we create new content around each of the terms and create pages with high conversion rates for each one, whilst engaging in an aggressive campaign to generate high numbers of inbound links to your pages from other credible, authorative high PR sites. This is of supreme importance because the quality, as well as the quantity, of inbound links is amongst the most important factors considered in the search engine's algorithms.

How we can help your search engine marketing efforts?

We focus on generating targeted traffic and increasing your ROI rather than getting rankings for meaningless or pointless search terms and trophy phrases. As a result, we won't deliver hundreds of pages of  "ranking reports" or other fluffy metaphysical data at the end of the month as a means to justify your expense.Instead you will be able to easily see the results of our efforts by simply looking at the most important website metrics - i.e. leads and earnings directly generated by your website. We will, however, deliver a monthly report outlining improvements and changes in important key metrics.

Altech Technology Concepts Search Optimization Services.

Altech Technology Concepts has been involved in high-level web development and other aspects of IT since 1999. We have recently added specialized search engine optimization to our catalogue of services.Contact us to learn more about what we can do to transform your website from just another page on the Internet into a top leads generating channel for your business.