Below is a brief answer about SEO. To learn more, please contact Len Feehan at len@feehan.com or call 610-692-1680.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
To better understand SEO, you first need to know the main purpose of search engines. They are programs that search internet documents for specified keywords, then provide a list of the web pages where the keywords were found.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

This can also be done with Paid Per Click (PPC) ads but the best way is via natural (aka organic) search results. That’s because if a site appears on the first page in a “natural” search result list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. Some people tend to be considerably more skeptical of anything that looks like an advertisement. In contrast, if your site comes up on the top four non-sponsored results on Google for a particular keyword, you will gain enormous credibility for that fact alone. SEO also targets local search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

Content -Code - Credibility
As an internet marketing strategy, SEO looks into how search engines work and what words and phrases people use to search. The core concepts of the SEO strategy can be boiled down to the 3 C’s: Content; Code; and Credibility. So, it’s best to write copy and code your site with the keywords and phrases most likely to be used by your target audience in their searches. By editing its content and improving HTML coding, you can increase web pages’ relevance to specific keywords and remove any barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Therefore, if you understand how search engines work, and how humans search for information, you can better optimize a website by putting all the right search terms in all the right places.

When to do SEO?
SEO is best done prior to launching a new site, or during a site redesign. This helps ensure that the site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO program can help increase the ranking of an existing site.

© 2009 Leonard Feehan Associates LLC