SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is an industry that was created out of necessity, and was really made popular as a result of Google’s search engine although people were doing SEO long before Google. In this context a search engine can mean anything from Google, Yahoo, Bing or even other search engines such as Amazon search or even Facebook search. The majority of the time the search engine we refer to is Google.

The definition of optimization is “an act, process, or methodology of making something as fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible.” Within the SEO context, that is exactly what happens, we try to make your website as perfect and functional as possible.

In general, most people will “Google” a question they have and choose one of the top listings, or maybe go to the second page.The goal of SEO is to help your website rank on the first page of Google for those keywords or keyphrases so that customers will find your website before your competitors.

To keep things really simple, SEO is the process of optimizing a website so that search engines will aptly categorize and score your website and place it well within the rankings. When you first start doing SEO, you might be ranked on the 15th or 8th page of Google. After doing SEO for a period of time, you’ll start to see your website move closer and closer to page 1 for a number of keywords.

Keep in mind, most of your competitors also have hired SEO companies or may even have someone within their company dedicated to doing this so not only are you up against Google, you are up against your competitors as well.

By doing SEO, it will not guarantee that you will rank on Google but it will greatly increase your odds of doing so.

When you search for “blue jeans” on Google search, Google will display around 10 of the top listings on the first page. Those 10 websites usually have the best SEO methods, and are ranked accordingly.

The better the website, the more likely it is that Google will choose it to be ranked within the top search results.

Bad and unhelpful websites will generally be placed on the later pages of Google.

It takes time, effort, money, and knowledge to do SEO.

There are two main aspects of SEO: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing elements on your website for search engines. This includes but isn’t limited to content on your websites, images on your website, blogs, and HTML. On-page SEO encompasses many different disciplines such as website speed, blogging, content, user experience and so much more. Any area of your website that Google “sees” is subject to on-page optimization.

Off-page SEO is the practice of optimizing elements off of your website for search engines. Probably the biggest example of off-page SEO are backlinks, however there are lots of other elements such as social media, external blogs and many other factors that might come into play.

When we “do” SEO on a website, we simply improve the on-page and off-page factors of your website so that Google will see your website in a more favorable position.

The cool thing about us is that we actually document exactly how we do SEO on our SEO services page. From the moment we speak to you on the phone to the 3rd month in, we are fully transparent with all of our services.

No, not at all. As a matter of fact Google has not only written guidelines just for SEO’s, they employ SEO’s in-house as well. Google also does SEO on their own companies and products as well, so they will be more visible in the search engines. Practically every major company in the world that has a website does SEO to some degree, some more than others. For instance both ebay.com and amazon.com have huge departments of people dedicated to making sure they show up in the search engine results pages.

Some SEO’s attempt to foil the search engines by doing blackhat SEO which some people do consider cheating, but this is not a tactic that most SEO’s employ. SEO is all about making your website, your content and your connections better.

SERP is an acronym that stands for “search engine results page.” Essentially this means any list of Google (or Bing) results that displays a list of websites.

Just Google any search term you like, and you will see a SERP or search engine results page

Simply put, blackhat SEO or sometimes referred to as “webspam” is the practice of using tactics outside of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Much like email spam violates a number of laws by sending unwanted emails to people, blackhat SEO’s will place thousands of shoddy links on 3rd party websites, hide keywords within your website and other methods to make Google think you are more authoritative than you actually are.

Whitehat SEO or what we like to call “SEO” is simply the process of doing SEO within Google’s guidelines. There is a very fine line between blackhat and white-hat and there can be many grey areas.

For example, if you ask your friend who owns a website to give you a link to your business, did you know that that is actually against Google’s guidelines?

Through constant research and understanding, we are able to navigate this complex system of rules and regulations Google has put into place and help your website rank better.

A Google penalty or “action” is put into place when Google has caught your website violating its guidelines. This might come as a result of you placing too many links, too many advertisements or a number of different reasons. A penalty can be handed out automatically via Google’s algorithm, or manually via a Google employee who has deemed your website spammy.

There are a few popular penalties that people talk about within the SEO community that you might have heard of. One of them is Penguin, the other is Panda. Penguin deals with spammy backlinks, and Panda deals with on-page factors such as low-quality content.

If you do get a penalty, there are ways to get them lifted, but they are not easy. This can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year to remove.

In short, there is no quick way to see if you are at risk for a Google penalty. We employ a number of people, tactics, and tools that can create a “risk profile” to see if your website is at risk for a penalty.

Being that there are many different types of violations of Google penalties, there are also a number of different types of penalties you can receive.

If you do think you are at risk for a Google penalty the best thing to do is give us a call. We’ll dive in and see what your situation is and give you an honest opinion based on our experience.