SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the critical process of optimizing the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines - principally Google - through "natural" - also called "organic" or "algorithmic" - search results for targeted keywords entered by the person searching for information.

First page phenomenon: Because web searchers for the most part have limited attention spans, the earlier a site shows up in the search results or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. This is why the "gold standard" is having your website show up on the first page of a Google search.

SEO can also target different kinds of searches, including searches for images, searches based on locality, and industry-specific searches, to name a few. However, Google is constantly refining its search technology, so the types or categories of targeted-searches increase almost weekly.

SEO should be a major part of any marketing strategy that aims to increase a website's relevance to the target customer. SEO takes into account how search algorithms work and what people search for. Bearing in mind, of course, the Google is highly secretive about its algorithms to keep web marketers from "gaming the system" and frequently changes things around with the result that a website that shows up on page one of a search one day, may not the next day.

SEO efforts involve many things including a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as accessing and addressing problems that could prevent Google's search engine indexing programs - called "spiders" - from fully indexing, or "spidering" your site.

The SEO can be implemented in website at any time, the sooner you do it the better. Effective SEO efforts often begin with the HTML source code of a site, which is why SEO should be an integral part of the initial web site development and design. The results are "search engine friendly" web site designs, menus, content management systems, URLs, and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

At Rustad Marketing we perform every aspect of SEO including helping the client develop the collateral tools that increase SEO effectiveness such as Blogs, on-line newsletters, on-line surveys, and automatic updates to Home page content.