What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the online marketing method of using various techniques to improve a website’s performance in the search engines enabling the website to show up higher and higher in individual internet searches.

Why is SEO an important part of my company’s promotion?
The natural search results (not paid ads and sponsored links) pull the largest percentage of internet viewers. People do not generally go beyond page 3 for most internet searches; the majority doesn’t go past page 1. High rankings on the search engines isn’t just for generating traffic today, it’s now part of your company’s credibility.  A company that doesn’t show up high in the rankings will be considered less relevant. A whopping 97% of those with internet will check out a service they are considering online – prior to using them. Google, Yahoo and Bing, the top 3 search engines also make up the majority of internet searches worldwide and are the major sources of people finding the companies and products they will use.  As print and Yellow Pages continue to shrink every year in this digital age, a lack of SEO can be very detrimental to your company’s future expansion.

Can I do my own SEO?
Lots of companies do their own SEO, but they generally will have someone very experienced with internet marketing internally doing it for them. If you are embarking on doing your own SEO, there is a fairly lengthy learning curve and a lot of factors to figure out. It’s not rocket science, but like trades such as carpentry, dry cleaning, landscaping, website development and other specialties – it’s not that we couldn’t BECOME specialists at each of them; it’s “DO WE WANT TO?” and “DO WE HAVE THE TIME TO?” It basically comes down to time. It is usually more cost effective to hire a company to work on your behalf that is specialized and has the tools and staff as opposed to hiring a person for it or doing it yourself.

How long will it take before I start ranking better?
This can vary depending on a lot of different factors. How competitive are the keywords? Are we working worldwide or locally? As well as many other questions. The search engines, while updating roughly every month, can take as long as 6-8 weeks to show your updated results, but even this is not 100% consistent. We’ve had results in days to weeks, but we’d say an average would come out to 2-3 months. The more time goes on, the faster the search engines get in this technology.

What is White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO?
Black Hat SEO is the general categorization of any un-ethical SEO techniques. The results to your website from using these techniques can be extremely detrimental. If Google for example were to find these techniques employed on your website, they will potentially delete your website from their search index, which would be the kiss of death for your website.  A reputable seo company will not use any Black Hat SEO techniques.

White Hat SEO techniques are the safe, search engine approved SEO techniques that build more naturally and do not risk the removal of your website from the search engines.

How long should I do SEO?
That depends on your goal, and the competition. If you had a local bakery in a small town, you could do an SEO program for 2-3 months and be where you need to be in local internet searches for a long time without any other SEO work.

If you had a plumbing company in a major metropolitan area such as Los Angeles or Chicago, where the competition is thick, you should continually do it every month like clockwork. Not only will there be more and more market share to gain traction in, your competition is also doing SEO and it is a constant fight for survival on the search rankings. The same goes for SEO on a world-wide or nation-wide basis with online product sales.

How does my website affect the performance of my SEO?
That mostly depends on what your website is designed in. If your site was designed in Flash for example, Flash is not currently compatible with most mobile products from Apple such as the iPad or iPhone.  It also does not perform favorable when Google’s spiders come crawling through your site to read it. HTML websites or blogging sites such as WordPress are highly recommended due to their performance in the search rankings.  This all falls into what your seo company will do for you.