1. What is SEO?
2. Why is SEO so important?
3. What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
4. Is SEO part of website design?
5. What are keywords and how do I choose them?
6. What are Meta tags and why are they important?
7. Can I buy high rankings?
8. WHAT does SERP stand for?
9. How do search engines decide which website is #1 on SERPs?
10. What is link popularity and why do links matter?
11. How long will it take for the SEO to show results?
12. Do you guarantee results?
13. How do I know if the SEO is working?

1. What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. 

2. Why is SEO so important?

Search engine optimization is important for a number of reasons including:

• 36% of searchers attribute top organic position with brand quality
• 60% to 70% of all search traffic comes from organic listings
• 90% of organic search traffic is driven from the top five listings
• 62% of searchers view only one page of results before clicking (Jupiter Research)
• Having the No. 1 listing in both organic and paid search can increase click rates by three times

3. What is the difference between SEO and SEM?

Because SEO increases your visibility in organic or natural search engine results, you don’t pay the search engines to achieve good rankings. You do pay your SEO provider for all optimization efforts.

Search Engine Marketing is paid to play for placement, such as sponsored ads or pay per click ads. Pay-per-click (PPC) or sponsored ads are those you see at the top or to the right of the organic SERPs. You pay for the ad by the click. Competitive keywords are often higher priced, while more niche-related keywords can be less costly.

Consider any traffic you gain from SEM as rented traffic – it will stop when you stop paying.  Where high rankings generated from SEO can pay over and over. 

4. Is SEO part of website design?

For best results, you should approach your web design with SEO in mind. That way, you are building a search engine friendly site from the ground up. However, there are many things you can do to an existing site to improve its search engine friendliness and appeal to your target market. 
 

5. What are keywords and how do I choose them?

Keywords are the terms your prospects and customers type into Google and other search engines when they search to solve a problem or find a solution. In SEO, you use those same keywords to optimize your web pages so that they will appear in the list of search results.

It’s important to choose keywords that your prospects and customers actually use versus internal or industry terminology. 

6. What are Meta tags and why are they important?

Meta tags refer to the Meta description and Meta keywords tags within your HTML code. Meta descriptions are important because they can appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs) under your page listing and serve to describe what your page is about. Your Meta description should be relevant to the copy on the page and entice the visitor to click and learn more. 

Meta keywords, while of little value to search engine rankings, can be important if you have a search function on your site. 

7. Can I buy high rankings?

No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic (and thus more advertising revenue). In other words, their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a good search engine; irrelevant results makes for a short-lived search engine.  

Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever you click Search:  

Natural/Organic - The 'real' search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.  

Paid - Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled "Sponsored Links", and normally take up a smaller portion of the window.  

8.   What does SERP stand for?

Short for search engine results page, the Web page that a search engine returns with the results of its search. The major search engines typically display three kinds of listings on their SERPs. Listings that have been indexed by the search engine’s spider, listings that have been indexed into the search engine’s directory by a human, and listings that are paid to be listed by the search engine.  

9. How do search engines decide which website is #1 on SERPs?

You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the search engines. Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out 'spiders' or 'robots' which 'crawl' (analyze) your site and 'index' (record) its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your site is useful and should be included in the search engine's search results. 

10. What is link popularity and why do links matter?

Think of the search engines as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the more important it is, and the higher it’s ranking. Link popularity is all about how many links you have, and how you can get more.

Links to your site tell the search engines how important your site is. They assume that if it's important enough for a lot of other sites to link to, it's important enough for them to display at the top of the rankings. Links are the single most important factor in ranking. Generally speaking, the more links you have to your site from other sites, the better your ranking.  

11. How long will it take for the SEO to show results?

SEO takes time.  Expect to see results in three to six months from when we begin working on your campaign, depending on if you have a brand new URL or an older one.

There are many factors that impact how long it will take for your website position to improve in search engine results.  Although search engines are constantly updating their records, they may not update their index of websites that link to you very frequently.  In addition, all off site content and links have to be compared with the information the search engine finds on your website.

If your website is new, search engine spiders may not "crawl" through your site on a regular basis.  However, Search Engine Optimization makes sure that your site is easily indexed when they do visit. 

Search Engine Optimization can help to provide the right on site and off site content to accelerate this process, but it cannot guarantee a timeframe because this is dependent on the search engines involved. 

12. Do you guarantee results?

Nobody can guarantee a number #1 position or specific ranking for your site for a given keyword phrase. There are simply too many factors beyond anyone's control - the search engines changing their ranking algorithms, efforts made by competitors, and new sites being added to the Web. Even if you get a top ranking, there is no guarantee how long it will remain so. 

Obtaining a specific ranking is analogous to managing a portfolio. Your financial advisor will do their best to monitor the stock market and other indicators and to make sure your portfolio is managed to the best of their abilities. However, your advisor cannot guarantee that your portfolio will be at a specific dollar value or even that the amount will be up at all by a given date. 
 

13. How do I know if the SEO is working?

BTZWeb understands that return on investment and profitability are the ultimate measuring sticks for any marketing plan.  A major part of our SEO Services is the implementation of tracking and reporting software that allows us to closely monitor and report on the traffic that you site is receiving the results of that traffic.  Our SEO Plans have meeting/review/reporting built in on a monthly or quarterly basis and we are updating and refining your keyword content on a monthly basis to maintain optimal traffic and conversion.