ABOUT: INTERNET & WEB SITE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION / SEO

Search Engine Optimization, a.k.a. SEO / S.E.O. is an ever changing and evolving science mixing different algorithms from Google, Yahoo and Bing.com (formerly MSN).

There are tons of people and companies out there that will promise you the world and #1 rankings, but they forget to tell you that to do it ethically, there is only one way: develop REAL, FOCUSED, pages about a particular subject or product, and have some one that knows what they are doing with html develop it. There are no tricks, gimmicks or shortcuts you can take. No amount of money will "buy" your way to the top. Google, Bing and Yahoo are out there to deliver the best, most pertinent results to the user. It is that straightforward. If they catch you trying to trick them (by stuffing keywords into a page, developing mirror pages or sites, or using many of the other tricks out there to try and fake your way to the top, chances are you will find yourself banned from their directories all together.

How does a web site get penalized or excluded?

There are many reasons traffic can fall off. Perhaps SEO that pushed the envelope too far. It can happen by accident - a background color of white with a picture as wallpaper and white text on top - a search engine spider might think you're trying to hide white text on a white background and ban the site. Sometimes the rules change - what was a clever trick last month is "offensive" (Goggle's own term) this month?

The rules are undocumented and volatile. Staying ahead of Internet search engine practice is a full-time job. Search engine penalties can be applied in minutes and take months to lift - staying in front of the ball is essential.

Our specialty is web site rescue, redesign and maintenance. The input is the low-ranking or invisible mess you currently have - the output is a clean, validated and conforming site; the HTML simplified and commented so that future maintenance will be a much less costly business. With search engine bans & penalties removed and all the rubbish thrown away so that dial-up and mobile users can use your site too. Not every potential customer has broadband, Javascript or Flash, the latter sometimes for good reasons.

Getting results from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask Jeeves and Lycos involves co-operation - helping them meet their objectives as well as yours, and not trying to trick them into giving you an undeserved position on their results pages. Realizing their limitations, too, and operating within expectations. It's more than Search Engine Optimization - that's why we calls it Search Engine Relationship Management.

Why Search Engine Relationship / Management is Important.

Until now the search engines have tried to index every page on the web, subject to quality guidelines. But they cannot keep doing this - the web is growing too fast. And why should a search engine index and cache a company's 500,000 page catalog when a menu tree structure on the site will do the same job better and be more up to date.

What will the search engines do to contain their resources? First - properly implement the guidelines they've talked about for years and discard web sites that don't comply. This is already happening - many sites are finding that their search engine optimization is definitely first-generation. Many have either lost position or been dropped from some search engines entirely. What you got away with last year will hurt now - and what you get away with today will hurt down the line. Ask BMW about being banned from Google.

Second - the search engines will use partial indexing. Truly huge sites will find the honeymoon is over and only a fraction of their pages will be indexed. The key to the future is exploiting the resources the search engines are prepared to devote to you, and managing how they do it.

Sometimes a targeted directory entry or two can help - DMOZ or the Open Directory Project is falling in significance, but there are others that can be especially useful for a local business.

Is Duane Elliott Enterprises any good?

Check for yourself.

We can't guarantee any position in SERP's - no one can. We can, however, guarantee that you will outperform the median in your business and we'd aim to get you into the 98th percentile. Let's be fair - some sectors are hideously competitive - home refinancing, pension plans, real estate, wedding supplies, etc.

The odds are - if you think it would be a brilliant idea to put up a web site offering something ideal for the web, most-likely, several thousand people have already had the same idea... a long time ago!

You'd think search engine optimization would be the hardest-fought of all sectors - but the truth is that quite a few are just not very good. A source of endless amusement is a steady stream of "SEO specialists" asking on Usenet how to get their own sites listed.

We can get you well above the average. To get higher, you have a differentiation that we can place. A unique branding, perhaps, that gets you remembered. And we won't use any of the tricks that can get you banned.

The Jargon - Hits, Page Rank, Links, Sitemaps, HTML/text ratios, Canonical Penalties, Crawlers and Spiders.

And the complexity of Google's product - XML versus HTML sitemaps, Analytics, AdSense, AdWords, etc.

The mythology. We do that bit. None of these are relevant to your business. Your bank manager won't care how many hits you had this year or what your Page Rank is. So the only reasonable metric for a web site is - how much business does it bring in?

There are ways to measure that. Dedicated web-only phone lines, web-only special offers, a good web statistic program, Analytics, and the like. Most classic marketing techniques will work.

You might wonder whether a web site is a good idea. Someone like a freelance plumber covering a small area might just as well sign write his van with a cell phone number and advertise locally - web sites are not compulsory. For other businesses, web sites can be a way to find new customers who then remember you - the capture mode; or a way to drive transactions through the business - full e-commerce.

But for the latter two - it doesn't matter how pretty and easy to use your site is if no one can find you.

Your corporate / company image on the web.

No doubt your company operates to the highest professional standards. Your financial records are neat, tidy and audited. You may have ISO9000 certification and the highest standards in your IT department. Your web site, though, is different.

Uniquely - the actual code used to generate the web page your visitors see is visible to everyone. Try it - go to your own web site, and then click on View and Source. See any structure? See any comments in the code? Is this business-critical function documented at all? It's like letting your customers rummage in the cellar.

And are your pages validated? If you produce and/or sell a quality product, your web page should reflect quality. Nowhere else does your company lay itself open like this.

 We have designed award winning sites that have brought on sponsors such as Microsoft, Warn Industries, Superwinch, Superlift, Ramsey Winch, Carr Industries, Smittybilt, Line-X, Sir Michaels and many, many more quality SEMA (automotive-related) and many other types of companies. S.E.O. (aka Search Engine Optimization Services), web site design, programming, e-commcerce and web hosting is our specialty!

Our philosiphy is simple:

• Keep it clean, deliver information in an organized, easy to navigate manner.

• Don't overdue technology to the point where it becomes non user friendly, and, cost much more to design than it should. We keep it simple - using downright primitive but W3C validated code that anyone could understand and maintain, eschewing gimmicks unless essential for business reasons. Just because it whistles, flashes, pirouettes and snorts doesn't mean the phone is going to ring.

• No technical lock-ins, no copyrights on what you get. You paid for it - it's yours.

• We stay strictly within the letter and spirit of the search engines' guidelines. They are all getting better at spotting cheats all the time - we stay away from that danger and even leave a safety margin.

Duane Elliott Enterprises uses a number of internally-developed tools to analyse web site logs and spot anomalies. These reports that are easily accesible to you. Your site will also be monitored via the Google Webmaster Tools Console and via Google Analytics - the latter allowing you to examine any of dozens of different reports any time of the day or night.

Where to start:

Tell us what you do - why would someone want to see your name come up rather than a competitor's? It's a waste of time for you and the search engines if you come up in searches for things you don't do. Tricking people into coming to your site when they really should be somewhere else helps neither of you - so forget the "as many as possible" and think of "the right ones". Never mind the width, feel the quality. Profit is what it's about.

The web is not a magical place - the same rules apply as anywhere else. How did the people who know you now first find you, and how did those who ought to have found you miss you?