Decoding Search Engine Optimization: Part 1
It is safe to say that if you use the Internet, you most likely use an online search engine. America’s most popular search engine, Google, is so well known and widely used that it is often used as a verb: “to Google.”
So how can you get Google’s mass popularity to work for your business? The way to get noticed by search engines is to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, most of which Brattle can employ for you with fairly little work. The concept is fairly simple, the more rich, relevant content you have on your site the better search engines can index you. This content can come in many forms, from keyword dense appropriately targeted content, to press releases, to blog entries, and even links to and from your site. The end goal is to be on the first two pages of listings when someone searches for your area of expertise.
However, you may have found a site that came up early in your search results but was just an endless maze of links and keywords with very little helpful content. At Brattle, this is not the approach we take to SEO. In fact, we avoid taking one single approach to SEO; we consider every aspect to create a superior site that has great usability, design, and content. We believe that getting viewers to your site is only half the battle. Once there, they need to be guided to content relevant to their query and have an enjoyable experience at your site.
At Brattle we believe in 100% transparency in all of the work we do. We want you to know exactly what you are getting for your money. Many companies hide their specific SEO practices; we believe this is because they are charging unnecessarily high prices for a relatively straightforward service. In this interest of transparency, we’ll briefly detail a few of the techniques we employ to design and optimize a website:
- Meta Data: tags in the code of every page to describe page content and provide keywords
- Accessibility Issues: ensure accessibility by search engines and impaired viewers with proper tagging of media content
- Keyword Density: use of frequent keywords while maintaining readability
- Link Building: creation and checking of links within and to your site that improves both site navigation and search results ranking
- Press Releases/Blog Posts: continuous addition of content creates more for viewers to peruse, more links, and more area to place keywords
Hopefully, it is clear that most of these techniques are related and work best when applied together. This is why we don’t specialize in just one area, and why we aim to take a broad approach. We believe it helps keep your website uniquely yours while boosting your page ranking from all fronts.
Now if this all still sounds a little confusing and foreign, don’t worry: Brattle can provide you with an extensive analysis and report on your site, providing insight on how to increase your “findability.” And while many companies attempt to make the SEO process sound very difficult and complex – charging what we consider to be unnecessarily high amounts for their services – Brattle offers SEO services that might be priced at nearly $750 by other companies, for only $150. And as always, we will be happy to answer any questions you might have along the way.
