A Passion for Creativity ~ Design Blog: So You’re On-line! Now What? <br><i>Search Engine Optimization!</i>

In the rush to get on-line many companies don’t take in to account the need for Search Engine Optimization. Without proper optimization you’re just throwing your Web site On-line and hoping it lands where it will be seen... kind of sounds like something we used to do as kids! :-)

Go on to Google, or your favourite Search Engine, right now and pretend you are a potential client or customer of your company. Do a search for whatever it is your company sells, or for the service you provide. Don't use your company name as this is a client who doesn't know who you are. Use your city name to reduce the number of results and to make it easier for you to find a local company. How did you do? Did you notice the number of results you got though... it's no wonder you don't do that well!

Now try this search... go into Google, search for Ottawa Designer, or just click here. See how well I did... notice the number of results you got... 1,740,000! I think I did pretty good! Don't you? Now, I can't guarantee to get you the same results, but I will guarantee I can improve them over what you are now getting, if you haven't had your site optimized. Here's another example, I just redesigned a web site for a local Ottawa Digital Printing company. During the design process I took into account optimizing the site, the design stage is the best time to start thinking about optimizing. Once I had done my research on the keywords that the client had provided, I finished the optimizing and launched the new site. The site went from 0 to #6 in three days! Before optimizing, the site was not coming up on Google for any of the search terms we used, after three days they were #6! With a little bit of fine tuning, a week later they held #1, #3, #6 and #9 spots for various keywords!

So, I've said it before, and I'll say it again... if you are looking for a company to improve your rankings on Google, Yahoo or MSN, look no further! Forgive me for repeating information I have shared before, but they do say there is power in repetition! Take a look at the following rankings for some of my clients' web sites. Click on the keywords to see for yourself! Note the total results number in brackets, the higher this number the more difficult it is to get to the top. I don't include rankings for company names, as those are always very easy to get. I did include Robert Bateman though, as that was very hard to get and took a while to achieve... No. 1 out of almost 4 million results!!

Search Engine Rankings as of July 23th, 2007

Site: www.lightwave-repro.com
Keyword(s): ottawa digital printing
Google - 1st page, No. 5 and 6 position (1,940,000)
MSN - 1st page, No. 1 position (95,892)
Yahoo - 1st page, No. 6 position (547,000)

Site: www.lightwave-repro.com
Keyword(s): ottawa colour digital printing
Google - 1st page, No. 1 and 2 positions (879,000)
MSN - 1st page, No. 1 position (17,585)
Yahoo - 1st page, No. 1 and 3 positions (101,000)

Site: www.dedicateddesktop.com
Keyword(s): ottawa designer
Google - 1st page, No. 1 position (1,740,000)
MSN - 1st page, No. 1 position (388,530)
Yahoo - 1st page, No. 5 position (2,120,000)

Site: www.robertbateman.ca
Keyword(s): robert bateman
Google - 1st page, No. 1 and 2 positions (1,930,000)
MSN - 1st page, No. 1 and 2 position (343,743)
Yahoo - 1st page, No. 1 position (3,780,000)

Site: www.robertbateman.ca
Keyword(s): artist environmentalist
Google - 1st page, No. 1 position (1,420,000)
MSN - 1st page, No. 1 and 2 position (82,226)
Yahoo - 1st page, No. 1 and 7 position (680,000)

Site: www.meredithgallery.ca
Keyword(s): gulf island watercolours
Google - 1st page, No. 1 position (108,000)
MSN - 1st page, No. 1 and 2 position (3,372)
Yahoo - not appearing?

Site: www.meredithgallery.ca
Keyword(s): salt spring watercolours
Google - 1st page, No. 2 position (220,000)
MSN - 1st page, No. 1 and 2 position (4,772)
Yahoo - 1st page, No. 10 position (200,000)

*It's important to note that achieving high ranking on any search engine is not a permanent thing. Fluctuation can occur daily as more and more web sites are created and/or optimized. The above results may have changed since the date of this posting. Regular maintenance of your web site should be carefully done so as not to lose or corrupt the optimization that has been done. Some html editing software automatically alters your code which can change optimization results.

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photo © Julian Luckham ~ A View from Here