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When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) there are some regular tips you will want to use in order to not only get listed in search engines, but also start to rank higher. Obviously the goal is to be in the top ten in order to get on the first page of google, bing, yahoo or other search engines.

In the past companies just came up with one Page Title and used it across all pages on the site. An example would be "Brandwise | Fort Worth Marketing Firm". On one hand we were trying to use SEO by using the company name and what we do and maybe even where we do it similar to the previous example. The problem is this, in order to get the best results, Page Titles have to be tied to the page content and keywords(keyphrases). So now you may want the Page Title similar to the example or our current homepage - Page Title is "Brand management firm | Brandwise". 

This works great for our homepage because it says what we do and then who we are. This is however the only page that uses this Page Title. The goal is that someone either does a search on "brand management firms" or "Brandwise". If you do a search you will see we come up on the first page for each one of these items (at least on google and bing).

Now let's look at another example. How about the Brandwise Portfolio page. On this page we use "Brand Design Portfolio" for our page title. You see how this is a little more relevant to this page than "Brand management firm | Brandwise". It helps to understand keywords and try to add them to your Page Titles. Because this is a more competitive group of keywords, it is harder to rank on the first page of a search engine for "Brand Design Portfolio", but because these words define the content on these pages, we have used this anyhow.

The goal is to get your Page Title using keywords that you have a pretty good chance of ranking for.

Search engines give a lot of priority to your Page Title so you want to choose it wisely. By strategically thinking like your prospects and how they search for the similar content on this page, you will be able to create a keyword focused Page Title.

Keep in mind that the first word in the Page title is more valuable to search engines. So instead of using a page title like "the best marketing ideas for Fort Worth real estate web sites", you might want to use something like "Marketing Strategies used by Fort Worth Real Estate web sites". So the longer the title the less value each additional word has in value. That being said, try to start out strong with your first few words. Make these words as relevant as possible to the content on that page and use keywords that you know you will actually be able to rank for.

When you are looking to build or rebuild a web site, you first decide what your goals are for the web site. Do you want the site to be an educational tool or a sales tool, etc. Once you have your goals in mind and written down, you will want to define your audience that will be visiting the site to meet those goals. The next step is designing the site in a way that is easy for this audience to find everything they need and navigate through your site. Lastly, you need to build the site in a way that you can get found online.

The first way you can get found is through Paid (Pay Per Click) Advertising like Google's ad words. We have only dabbled with PPC advertising so we are not experts in this at this point. We are told however that this is a good way to start getting you ranked quickly in the search engines. I am told that you can have same days results when your campaign is properly implemented. The great thing is your campaign can revolve around targeted keywords or phrases. The down side is this cost money for ongoing campaigns. Typically this is one of the reasons our clients have not done too much of PPC advertising because of the ongoing expense. Obviously if you know what you are doing and set up proper landing pages behind your campaign, you will be able to convert the clicks to leads. As long as your sales team is able to convert your web leads into clients, the price may not be a concern.

The next option is Organic Search. Basically organic search means you build your web site using search engine optimization.For those of you that are familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), here are the details on this. SEO is the technique of building a web site using Keywords and Keyphrases to build your content, page titles, meta data and other items within your web site content. The goal is writing content that focuses on specific and targeted content for each page. This allows search engines t find this specific page on this specific topic when anyone does a search for this.

Organic search works well, but does take a little longer to get results than PPC campaigns. Organic however is free- well except for your time to add the content to your site. Organic works best if you have a content management system so that it is easy to add & edit content and move, add & delete pages on your site. A blog also works really well doing all these things.

Organic may take a month, 2 months or 3 months to start getting traction depending upon how aggressively you add content around targeted keywords and optimize all your pages. But once you are listed you keep adding new pages/content and you can quickly start ranking for multiple keywords. This is the route we recommend to our clients because it helps them commit to longterm success habits. In as little as 3 months out clients have seen their traffic triple and they are starting to get leads from the organic approach we set in place.

Some other thoughts on Paid vs. Organic Search:

• people tend to trust the organic search results since their search engine found these links - to get to the top the site has to have trust, visitor volume going to the site, and relevance to the topic searched
  
  
• most people know that the PPC is based on the people that have the highest budget - so this could be good or bad depending on the user
  
  
• studies have shown 100% of people are willing to click on organic search links while only 10-30% are willing to click on PPC search links
  
  
• lastly the search algorithms are so good that the typical organic search result are very relevant - whereas since people buy the PPC keywords, the pages behind these links may not be 100% targeted to this actual topic

Brandwise is not saying you shouldn't ever do PPC campaigns though. As a matter of fact sometimes using PPC to get up and running quickly is a good idea and then in a month start letting your organic search kick in. For most clients and especially if money is an issue we recommend starting by building a professional web site that is set up to use organic search. Once things are up and running and you start to generate some new business from your web site then we recommend looking into PPC.

To learn more about the professional web site design focused on organic search results review this Inbound Marketing link. To see some samples of this type of work and a case study on the Dickey Law Firm click the Professional Web Site Design link.