Web SEO is an absolute requirement.

Without search optimization, or a large advertising budget, your website has no hope of being competitive. Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via 'natural' (organic, algorithmic) search results. In recent years, SEO has moved from being a dark, shady, way to cheat web searchers to a legitimate science and stand-alone industry. Top search result pages in every category, industry, and profession are dominated by companies which appreciate and utilize SEO technology. All businesses with an online presence must have SEO.

Getting to the top is important.

If you want your business to succeed online, SEO is vital. People find web resources through a search engine. Google is by far the most used. Most people will not care to look further than the top seven or eight results on the first page, let alone go to a second page.

Typing 'cellular phone' into a Google search returns over 12 million results. That is over 1.2 million pages showing ten result listings each.

SEO is not well executed in-house.

The process of SEO is extremely complex. Many different methods and philosophies must be implemented and meshed together in the way that is most effective for your individual company. SEO encompasses the many different search types, such as image search, local search, industry-specific vertical search engines, and so on.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a website's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and the words for which people typically search. SEO efforts involve a website's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent a search bot from fully crawling or spidering a website.

Bots...? Crawling spiders...?

A 'bot' or 'spider' is a piece of software that is programmed to crawl through and thus index, database, pages on the World Wide Web. The web contains billions upon billions of pages. The huge database is then searched through when a query, words or phrase, is entered into a search engine website such as Google. The indexed websites in the database containing the words typed will be returned as results. The order in which they appear in the results pages is determined by the computer algorithm.

Being search friendly...

Because effective SEO requires changes to the source code programming of a website, SEO should be incorporated into a website's development and design. The term "search engine friendly" is used to describe website designs, menus, content management systems, URLs, online shopping carts, virtually all aspects of a website.

The white hats and black hats...

SEO can be classified into two broad categories; techniques search engines recommend as good practice, and techniques meant to trick or defeat a search engine. The first category is known as "white hat" SEO, and the second as "black hat" SEO. Black hat perpetrators anticipate their websites will be banned once the search engines discover what they are doing.

An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to search engine guidelines and involves no deception. However, white hat SEO is not only about following guidelines. The main goal of SEO is to ensure a website is found by those searching for it. Most people do not search for a particular website, but rather a particular product or service that is perhaps within a certain geographical area. SEO strives to put your website ahead of others offering similar products and services in your area of the country.

White hat is the creation of 'honest' search relevant content that is also easily digested by search engine bots and spiders. Search engines will penalize a website discovered using black hat methods; either by reducing its ranking or eliminating the listing from the search database entirely. Obviously, it is important to use a reputable SEO provider. Anyone with grandiose SEO promises should not be perceived as honorable.

To be competitive, a website must be 'search savvy'; managed by persons who know search optimization technology. IntrTek will help your website maintain a high search ranking, while also protecting your good reputation for web ethics, integrity, and professionalism.