Search engine optimization (SEO)
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We begin by assuming that your goal is to make a profit or promote a cause, not to be able to say "We are the top ranked site for super-gizmos." Our preoccupation with your bottom line begins in selecting the search terms to work on, so that you are targeting real and reachable customers who are ready to spend.
We then work to build your rankings, so that customers will find your website rather than your competitors' websites. More on this process below.
Finally, we make sure that your landing pages - the pages that we rank in the search engines - funnel customers into your sales process. This is a major oversight of many SEO consultants, who are focused just on what happens at Google or Yahoo or MSN, but do not take a direct interest in your sales process.
"Treat the search engines like you would the media - as a conduit to your audience. Nurture them, and they will nurture you. Feed them information you would want your visitors to read, and that's what they will feed your visitors."
You don't need to hire a local SEO consultant; you do need to hire the best. We are located in eastern Ontario (the Ottawa-Cornwall-Montreal area) of Canada, but we service clients in Europe, Australia, the USA and elsewhere. We operate using the following optimization principles:
- Follow the letter and the spirit of the search engines' guidelines, to avoid placing our clients in current or future trouble.
- Focus on the visitors, both humans and robots, when optimizing a website.
- Rankings are not good enough - the listing has to sell and the page has to deliver.
- We are not coders. We are strategists who use coding and other techniques to market your business and your website.
- Non-reciprocal links are more valuable than reciprocal links.
- More is not necessarily better. Optimal is better (that's what it means to "optimize").
- Trust is a valuable commodity. Don't make false promises to clients.
- Never work for two clients targeting the same search terms (avoid conflict of interest).
- We don't do "crash 'n' burn" SEO. If that's what you are looking for, there are plenty of unethical SEO consultants who do.
Amazingly, many professional search engine optimizers are coders who think of themselves as coders. We are strategists, who think of ourselves as website marketers. We use coding as a tool to get our message across, but it is only one tool at our disposal.