Jacksonville SEO Specialists

If You Hear “We’ll make your website #1 in Google”…

If you hear this, put your sneakers on and run. This is a wild claim that you hear all the time from so-called SEO Specialists. This is an unqualified statement because it does not stipulate a search phrase. There is no magic bullet any SEO firm or person can use to quickly make your website rank #1 in Google. Achieving the #1 position in Google requires the skills and knowledge of an experienced SEO provider, a carefully planned optimization strategy and often requires weeks and months of work, especially in competitive industries. Our Jacksonville SEO specialists will explain in detail the optimization steps that we take and why we take them, and provide detailed answers to any question you might have.

Understanding the use of Key Phrases

There are many elements to effective SEO. One of the most important is key phrases. And how we use key phrases is very important. In fact, it’s how we communicate with Google about the subject matter of your website’s pages. And… if it’s not done right, it can actually weaken the effectiveness of your website’s search optimization. Below we discuss choosing the best key phrases so here, lets cover some of the important points about properly using key phrases. One of the most important usage rules is, don’t over do it. This is called key phrase spamming and Google doesn’t like it. It’s also worth noting that Google recognizes variations of the same word. For example photographer and photography can both be used to optimize a page without confusing Google. Other steps include optimizing links, image alt tags, header tags, image and graphic file names and short code names. We’ll dive deep into how we perform all these optimization steps when we meet to discuss your website. For now, just know that any SEO specialist should be able to prove they know how to properly optimize with key phrases by performing Google searches with them to see their client’s website in the top spots.

Choosing the Best Key Phrases

Any SEO firm worth their salt will help you select the best key phrases for your website. They should ask you about your goals, the aspects of your products and services that differentiate you from your competitors, and your primary products and services. Then based on your answers, perform the research necessary to identify and advise you on the top or most used key phrases for your industry, your products and your services. They should also advise you of the competition level or how much the selected key phrases are being used in competing websites. This information combined with your goals will allow you and your SEO firm to select the best key phrases to use. If an SEO firm asks you “What key phrases would you like us to use?” again, put your sneakers on and run.

The “Meat”! Quality Content is Still King

A bit of an odd way to describe web site content, never the less appropriate for my next point. It is not reasonable to expect to achieve high rankings with a small web site, or even a large web site with limited content, especially in an industry where you are competing with websites that are loaded with product and service information, industry information, interactive informative graphics and features, etc. The first thing any good SEO firm should advise is to make sure that every page of your website has a minimum of 300 words or more that is properly optimized. Effective SEO strategy begins with the basics; by starting with an attractive website design that is constructed and coded to look nice and perform properly on all devices, by creating redundant easy to use navigation, by composing and creating content that is very informative and helpful to individuals who are interested in your site’s subject matter, and that each of these areas are properly optimized. Your site should be equal to or greater in properly optimized “Meat” than your competitors if you expect to beat them in the organic rankings.

GEO Targeting and Your Competition

Our Jacksonville SEO specialists provide SEO for all types of businesses, some of our SEO clients provide services for customers all over the country while others serve customers in their local market. Regardless of your market’s geographical area, it is imperative to consider and understand your competition and the power of their website and the marketing they are doing to promote their website. A good SEO firm will help you evaluate your competition and give you a reasonable explanation of the competitive environment you will face and what effort will be necessary to compete in your industry for the top rankings in Google and other search engines.

A while back, we took on a website design and SEO project for a small custom hardwood flooring company here in Jacksonville. They were facing competition from many well known established local competitors with attractive and in some cases large websites. On the surface it would seem that their entry level ten page web site might have a difficult time competing. But we saw an opportunity. In developing the design and SEO plan we realized that their competitors, large and small, had not effectively optimized their websites for the Jacksonville market, a lucky break. By identifying the top key phrases that searchers we using to find “Jacksonville custom hardwood flooring”, and extensively optimizing their website with geographically targeted key phrases, we were able to launch a brand new website and domain name that achieved the #1 spot in Google for many of the key phrases we used and quickly outperformed websites that had been around for years.

How Long SEO Results Should Take

Everyone wants to be #1 or at least high in the rankings as fast as possible, but you will need to exercise some patience and be prepared to invest in an ongoing program if you want your web site to achieve and maintain good rankings. Achieving top rankings can take even longer in highly competitive industries like the legal and plastic surgery industry. Inspect what you expect by monitoring rankings for your target key phrases, review your Google analytics regularly, and document the number of inquiries you receive from your website. Also allow some freedom and access to effect changes and adjustments that will need to be made.

If your website is more than a few years old and has not been touched for some time, the search engines know this. Your web site will have developed a reputation of being a stale web site. When a website becomes stale, Google will increase the time between visiting and caching every time it sees that nothing has changed since their last visit. when our Jacksonville SEO specialists begin to optimize a stale website, we have to take special steps to regain the attention of Google and other search engines. If these special steps are not taken, it could take a number of weeks, potentially months for any SEO efforts to translate into improved rankings. Once our special steps retrain Google within a couple of weeks, you will see a noticeable jump in your site’s rankings. Then over the next two to three weeks your rankings will bounce around a bit while the search engines reevaluate all the fresh content throughout your updated or new website. We update and make adjustments to our client’s websites regularly. This causes Google to revisit our websites regularly to cache and reevaluate rankings as often as every few days. If your website has not received any SEO attention in a while, your rankings will have dropped below where they should be and even a limited SEO effort will cause rankings to improve. If you begin an SEO campaign with an SEO provider to improve a stale website, you should see a noticeable over all bump in your Google rankings within three to four weeks and continuous improvements over time.