| SEO Frequently Asked Questions
1. What
are META tags?
2. Is optimizing META
tags enough?
3. Does every page of
my site need to be optimized?
4. What is my site uses
frames or Java?
5. What if my site contains
dynamic pages?
6. How many keywords should
I target?
7. How many search engines
will my site be submitted to?
8. What information about
my site do you submit to search engines?
9. What is link popularity?
10. How do you increase
my site's link popularity?
11. How do you handle
site submission to non-English language search engines?
12. What is cloaking?
Does Xirlynx use this technique?
13. How long does it
take for my results to kick in?
14. How long will my
campaign last?
15. How often will I
receive search engine ranking reports?
16. How often do you
resubmit my site to search engines?
17. How will I know if
my business increases as a result of top rankings?
18. How do I ensure that
I stay ahead of my competition when it comes to online visibility?
1.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization refers to the effective utilization
of search engines to draw traffic to a Web site. It is an
ongoing, continuously evolving and high maintenance process
that includes the customization of a site for higher search
engine rankings. To learn more about SEO, click
here.
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2. What
is the objective of Search Engine Optimization?
The
main objective is to drive qualified visitors to your web
site, by increasing your product/service awareness, capturing
additional qualified prospects, resulting in additional sales
- all of which leverage your existing online investments.
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3. Why
doesn't my site rank well on search engines?
Having
your website rank high in the search engines is a science
and the rules for search engines are always changing. Here
are some reasons why you may be having poor ranking:
- Incorrect
usage of the TITLE tag or no TITLE tag content.
- Too many
occurences of the same word in a page (spamming).
- Missing
H1 and H2 heading tag content.
- Missing
ALT tag content in your graphic links.
- No meaningful
content in the first 250 characters on each page.
- Less than
200 words per page.
- Very few
pages on your website.
- No links
from other websites to your website (link popularity).
Also,
you should always submit your site to any search engines manually.
Please do not use automated submission services.
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4. Why
are high rankings so important?
As
searchers generally only explore the first two pages in the
search results, achieving high rankings on the search engines
will make an enormous difference in the amount of visitor
traffic your site receives.
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5. What
does my site ranking depend on?
Site ranking
tends to be "cumulative" and is dependent on the
following factors:
- The specific
keyword phrases (search terms) that have been targeted
- The overall
competitiveness of your industry - how many players are
there
- Whether you
are targeting a regional, national, or international market
- How well
ranking is monitored and the site tweaked over time for
improvement
- The progress
of your link popularity campaign
- The number
of competitor sites achieving new ranking themselves
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6. Why
wasn't my site optimized when it was built?
Depending
on who developed your site and how it was built, you’ll
find a million different reasons for this. Many web developers
believe it is the site marketer’s job to ensure the
site is found in search engines and vice versa. Most don’t
bother submitting your site to the important search engines,
assuming you or your marketing department will do it. Or perhaps
it wasn’t in your original development budget.
Consequently, your site can be launched for many months without
the search engines having any idea it exists. Some development
firms don’t include even the most basic META tags in
your site code when building it. Or those that do include
META tags without close consultation with you, resulting in
the wrong search terms used and poor performance.
Remember that search engine marketing is a relatively new
science and is an aggressive audience development and search
engine ranking service that requires constant monitoring to
be successful. And not many web design firms know this.
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7. What
is the difference between "site optimization" and
"site submission"?
Site
submission is the submission of your site to the search engines.
Site optimization, on the other hand, is a proactive service
ensuring your site will be highly visible on the engines your
site is submitted to. Optimization involves changes to your
site code, including development of tailored META tags, to
ensure that you are ranked highly on the search engines for
certain keywords and phrases relating to your site content.
This makes your site more accessible to searchers and ensures
your site is found by your target audience, giving you an
edge over your competitors.
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8. Can
you guarantee a #1 position on the search engines?
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, just to name a few.
Obtaining a specific ranking is like managing a stock 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.
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9. What
about exclusivity? Do you optimize competing sites?
Our
optimization service has always been exclusive for our clients.
For example, we would not take on any new clients whose sites
are in direct competition with existing optimization clients.
In other words, we would not optimize sites for the same
key search terms of our existing clients. To try
and rank two sites competing for the same search terms would
be an obvious conflict of interest!
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10.
Can I see how my competitors are ranking for my targeted keywords?
Sure!
Our Site Compatibility Analysis, Keyword Analysis and Monthly
Ranking Reports services offers you up to three competitor
sites to be included so you can compare at a glance how you
are ranking in comparison to them for the same search terms.
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11.
I have different websites in different countries. Do you optimize
each site differently?
Yes,
our approach would be to create META tags for each individual
site, tailored to the different countries. Apart from the
major search engines, we would also ensure each site was submitted
to the most popular foreign engines and directories in the
appropriate country. Currently, we have a list of over 1,000
search engines and directories, covering more than 100 countries.
This will ensure our clients can reach their target markets
effectively.
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12.
What about pages in languages other than English. Can those
be optimized?
Yes.
We generally develop a list of 20 English search terms to
cover each page (assuming the foreign language pages have
essentially the same content as the English). Then we regionalize
the search terms for each market/country and translate the
search terms into local languages (using our 3rd party professional
translation service if necessary). Once that is done, we develop
and test META tags for each page/site and have the site submitted
to the appropriate international and foreign search engines.
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13.
What should I look for when choosing a SEO consultant?
The
ideal Consultant is one that understands the dynamics of marketing,
business, and technology - and employs the highest levels
of integrity in their work. There are a number of unethical
practices or shortcuts that can be used in search engine optimization,
but the search engines themselves often times will not accept
these questionable or "tricky" practices. You should
choose a company that doesn't utilize any of these practices
to achieve short-term results for its clients. You should
also expect to benefit from the research expertise, customized
approached, management expertise, and on-going consultative
process from a SEO firm.
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14.
How experienced is Xirlynx in this industry?
To
achieve a high ranking web site, you have to know exactly
the most effective META tag design formula, best web copywriting
techniques, keep track of current search engine ranking algorithms,
know what format to submit the site in to every engine and
how often to resubmit the site. You also need to know whether
your site is technically compatible with search engine robots,
what types of pages the engines will accept and which will
be barriers to ranking, plus what sort of overall “relevancy
score” your site will receive from each engine you submit
to.
Not only that, but once you’re ranking highly, you have
to monitor your progress and adjust your tags every now and
then to ensure you stay up above your competitors on all engines
for your major search phrases. These are all crucial steps
to a high ranking, but very time consuming and not your core
business!
Xirlynx
Innovations engaged specialists in the area of search engine
marketing, whose full-time role is to place our clients high
in the search engines and keep them there. Our consultants
have developed and streamlined a unique and ethical search
optimization formula that has resulted in very impressive
rankings for our clients on international and regional search
engines.
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15.
Why is this service so expensive?
SEO
is a highly-specialized craft requiring much research, forethought,
skill and can be extremely time-consuming to implement correctly.
However, compared to offline and print advertising, search
engine marketing is quite cheap. The cost of having your website
optimized is by far the best advertising dollars spent and
the return on your investment (ROI) can be very great.
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16.
What's the right time for me to start a search engine marketing
campaign?
Immediately.
With 1 billion people using the Internet, and therefore using
major search engines, the potential Web audience is so large
that a strategic approach to capturing your share of that
market is critical. Obtaining higher rankings in the major
search engines is one of the most effective marketing tools
you can implement in today's online world.
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17.
How can search engine optimization impact my business?
The
goal of effective search engine optimization is not just adding
traffic - it's about growing your online business by reaching
qualified consumers of your products and services. With 1
billion people using the Internet and using search engines,
the potential online audience is so large for businesses that
a strategic and sustainable approach to capturing that market
is vital.
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18.
How does it compare to my other marketing investments?
Companies
continually re-evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing
programs against changing buying patterns, but never before
has there been such a rapid and intense change as the onset
of the Internet. Search engine optimization is still relatively
new and within the past five years, only the largest and most
aggressive companies have incorporated it into their strategic
marketing plans.
Today,
the science of search engine optimization is becoming an integral
and dominant aspect of any company doing business online.
Given the size of the potential market available via the Internet
and the ability to intantly reach potential customers anywhere
in the world, at any time, search engines has leaped ahead
to become a critical marketing tool. No longer can companies
ignore its effectiveness if done strategically, and done right.
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1.
What are META tags?
META
tags are part of the site’s HTML code and if your site
has them, they can be seen by choosing “View > Source”
from your browser toolbar. These tags include “keywords”
and a “description” of your web page. Generally,
this is where the search engines look to see what your web
page is all about. But having the tags is not enough –
because most of the major search engines today pay very little
attention to them.
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2.
Is optimizing META tags enough?
When
the Web was in its infancy, search engines depended profoundly
on the meta tag for search result relevancy, giving this piece
of code high prominence in their ranking algorithms. However,
as the Web has matured and search technology has become more
sophisticated, meta tags have lost significance. Although
they are still a factor considered in most of the major search
engines' ranking algorithms, they no longer carry the weight
they once did. As a result, novel factors, including off-the-page
considerations such as link popularity, now have higher weight
in determining the relevancy of a search result.
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3.
Does every page of my site need to be optimized?
In
a word - yes. Every page of a website can be a potential entry
point for visitors. You can't predict which page or pages
will be ranked the best for specific keywords. As such, each
page must be individually optimized to for optimal ranking.
Collectively, all pages of your website reinforce the common
"theme" of the site, which also can help boost ranking.
Don't assume that your home page is the most important page
on your site.
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4.
What if my site uses frames or Java?
Many
of the technologies in use on web sites today are visually
appealing; however, they are also indecipherable by search
engine spiders. Although Web technologies and design considerations
such as Frames and Java impair search visibility, there are
technical workarounds to get these sites indexed.
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5.
What if my site contains dynamic pages?
Dynamic
pages, usually an ASP of CFM driven websites, has an url which
looks something like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/products.asp?productid=528
When
search engines index a page, it will chop off everything after
the "?" and index only http://www.yourdomain.com/products.asp,
which displays nothing. As a result, your dynamic pages will
not be indexed.
We
can help you overcome this problem by implementing a gateway
that will convert a dynamically generated page to a HTML page.
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6.
How many keywords should I target?
Quality,
not quantity, is the focus of keyword strategy - there is
no absolute rule for how many keywords and phrases you need
to target. And before you even begin developing a list, you
must understand your target audience and the language different
searchers use when looking for your specific products, services
and information online.
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7.
How many search engines will my site be submitted to?
Always
be wary of any company that promises to submit your site to
"thousands of search engines for only $49.95". There
simply aren't thousands of engines worth submitting to. Most
of the time these scammy companies submit your site to guestbooks
and Free For All (FFA) pages using automated submitting software.
This can actually do your site more harm than good - because
you can be penalized in the rankings for linking to such sites.
With our services, your site will always be manually submitted
to the major search engines and directories. Depending on
which package you’ve chosen and your target market,
we will also submit your site to relevant regional and industry-focused
search engines and directories.
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8.
What information about my site do you submit to search engines?
In
most cases we only submit your site URL to the search engines
as it is often the only information the engines accept. Some
search engines will allow us to submit additional information
such as a description or a title for your site. On directories
such as Yahoo!, we must first search for and locate a logical
category for your site.
The
way we submit information about your site can “make
or break” your position within the engines, so we do
it very carefully. Following submission, most search engines
will use their web crawling agents (often called “spiders”
or “robots”) to collect information from the site’s
code, then rank and display it according to their own special
rules. Some engines and directories use staff to collect this
information, which is why there are often long delays between
the submission of your site and it’s listing.
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9.
What is link popularity?
Link
popularity is a measure of how many other sites contain a
hyper link to your site. Some search engines, most notably
Google, use link popularity as one of their most important
criteria in determining page rank. A further component of
link popularity is the quality of sites linking to yours.
A link to your site from Yahoo! web site will be regarded
as more important than a link from your friend's Wedding web
site that's hosted on a free server.
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10.
How do you increase my site's link popularity?
You
might think that logic dictates that you can increase link
popularity by undertaking an effort to get as many links to
your site as possible. However, search engines, in their constant
efforts to produce the most relevant results, are aware of
and penalize for such tactics. Having links to your site from
"link farms" or "free-for-alls" can actually
be damaging.
There
are valid and effective ways of increasing link popularity.
The process begins in your own backyard - proper optimization
involves maximization of the internal linking structure of
your site, having keyword-rich link text, and increasing the
number of relevant outbound links. From there, Xirlynx builds
upon this internal strength to focus our efforts on establishment
and cultivation of valuable external linking relationships.
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11.
How do you handle site submission to non-English language
search engines?
We
outsource foreign language search engine submission to 3rd
party contractors. Many foreign language search engines provide
an English version these days. For those that do not, we will
manually submit your site to any foreign language search engines
that we cannot access via the usual channels.
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12.
What is cloaking? Does Xirlynx use this technique?
Cloaking
is the technique of delivering a particular Web page to a
search engine, while serving a completely different Web page
to the end user. Search engines commonly overlook - and in
some cases even ban - web sites that employ this practice.
We are aware of the search engines' views on cloaking and
therefore does not employ this unethical technique.
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13.
How long does it take for my results to kick in?
The
amount of time required to see the results range anywhere
from 30 days to a few months. This is dependent on how often
search engines crawl sites to pick up changes, update their
index, and subsequently re-rank sites.
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14.
How long will my campaign last?
We
usually establish 12-month campaigns. There is an enormous
amount of education, research, analysis, technical programming,
and testing performed in the first 3 months in particular.
Natural rankings will begin to appear in search engines within
approximately 2-4 months.
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15.
How often will I receive search engine ranking reports?
We
send out search engine ranking reports monthly to our clients.
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16.
How often do you resubmit my site to search engines?
If
your site is search engine compatible and optimized correctly,
regular resubmission to engines is unnecessary. Our ranking
reports and maintenance checks keep track of your site every
four weeks. If your site is already ranking highly, there
is no need to resubmit it. However if any engines have dropped
your site altogether (as can happen from time to time), it
will be resubmitted to those engines. If an engine has dropped
your rankings considerably since last report, it is time to
tweak your META tags or check the optimized pages for any
problems. This is included as part of your Site Ranking Management.
Search engines will generally pick up the changes during their
next edit and re-rank the site accordingly. Resubmission is
usually only necessary if your site has undergone major content
changes.
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17.
How will I know if my business increases as a result of top
rankings?
There
are numerous Web Analytics tools available in the market that
can help you to track the effectiveness of your campaign.
By the end of the first twelve months, you will get an analysis
of your activity at the end of the campaign as compared to
the baseline established at the beginning of the campaign.
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18.
How do I ensure that I stay ahead of my competition when it
comes to online visibility?
As
we said earlier, search engine marketing is not a one-time
project. It must be seen as an ongoing strategic business
process if you want to continually stay ahead of the competition.
To that end, part of our consultative process is to assess
the activities, strengths and weaknesses of your major competitors'
sites, and devising appropriate strategies for netting superior
visibility for your site.
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