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What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
There are a lot of conflicting definitions of what exactly Search Engine Optimization is. According to Wikipedia:
"SEO is marketing by understanding how search algorithms work and what human visitors might search for, to help match those visitors with sites offering what they are interested in finding. Some SEO efforts may involve optimizing a site's coding, presentation, and structure, without making very noticeable changes to human visitors, such as incorporating a clear hierarchical structure to a site, and avoiding or fixing problems that might keep search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts, involve including unique content on pages that can be easily indexed and extracted from those pages by search engines while also appealing to human visitors."
To us, SEO technology is as simple as assessing/modifying a site to include search engines as an audience. This includes ensuring that a site's architecture and navigation are visible (and usable) by the search engines and that the code/content accurately reflect the keywords that the site is an authority on. This is in contrast to 'unethical search engine optimization' or 'blackhat search engine optimization' which seeks to exploit various holes in the search engines' algorithms to product artifical authority. The eng product of this is better search engine rankings for terms related to your business. A thorough SEO optimization campaign considers all aspects of a site including its architecture, layout, code, text content, purpose, revenue model, and audience to achieve better search engine rankings.
Ethical Search Engine Optimization
 The goal of any ethical SEO optimization project should be to work with the search engines instead of against them. Manipulating search engine results to rank non-authoritative sites hurts the search engines, the SEO industry as a whole, and doesn't provide lasting search engine rankings. Instead, an ethical SEO seeks to fix problems on a site that either prevent the search engine from viewing the contents or limit its access. We treat search engines as a second audience for the site. They have needs that are unique from human visitors and this has to be taken into account or it is likely the site will be hard for the search engines to assess. It is important to always consider the needs/wants of all of your visitors; including the search engines. Proper marketing to the engines provides the most effective long term search engine rankings and increased ROI.
A typical SEO optimization campaign involves asessment and optimization of the site's architecture, improvement of text content, code placement of keywords, and assessment/improvement of the site's link popularity to reach the sites potential search engine rankings. The site must be looked at as the search engines see it and a strategy is planned out based on the site's current state. Some sites need more work than others. Often, even previously 'optimized' sites need to have their keywords re-examined. We consider all aspects of the site and plot out a strategy that will provide the most benefit to the site, maximize the site's exposure, and increase overall search engine rankings.
 TreeHouse SEM only deals in ethical search engine optimization. Our SEO technology abides by the guidelines provided by the search engines. We do not deal in spam or black hat search engine optimization optimization in any way. We will need to know the history of your site to determine if any previous SEO optimization attempts were in violation of any rules. Our SEO technology is firmly grounded in ethics and we respect (and follow) all search engine guidelines.
Keyword Analysis
Search engine rankings are one thing, but what keywords (aka search terms) should you rank for? It’s easy to get better search engine rankings on keywords that no one searches for. Those search engine rankings provide no value to the site. It’s also not smart to optimize your site for keywords that are not relevant to your content. If your keywords are too general, then your traffic will not convert well.
For example, if your site sells only a specific product such as plasma TVs and you decide to SEO optimize for ‘home electronics’, a very large percentage of the traffic that is brought in will immediately leave once they realize the products they are looking for are not sold on your site. They could be searching for computers, printers, toasters, or dishwashers. The goal when selecting the keywords to optimize for is to consider the estimated popularity (and traffic) of the keyword, the competition for that keyword, and the relevancy of the keyword to your site. We specialize in determining exactly what keywords will work best for your business to maximize your effectiveness in the search engines.
SEO Optimization
Now that we’ve selected the appropriate keywords, we will want to optimize the structure of the site and theme the pages. Through extensive Research and Development, we have developed a powerful methodology that considers both the user and the search engines. This methodology includes adding theme markers in the code, assessing and writing appropriate text content, developing efficient site architectures, and improving the overall theme and authority of sites to help sites attain better search engine rankings..
The goal when optimizing a site is to honestly display the theme and purpose of your site to the search engines while providing the best and most authoritative content to users. “Tricking” the search engines is a pipe dream and eventually leads to poor search engine rankings and disappointment (not to mention possibly being banned from the engine altogether). TreeHouse SEO optimization campaigns are built to increase the visibilty of your site in the engines. They are not designed to manipulate the engines or 'optimize' for keywords that are not relevant to your site.
Community Linking
The search engines also take into account a site’s standing with the community. Think of linking as a voting system. For every site that link to you, you get a vote for your authority. The search engines also weigh the votes. The higher authority site that links to you, the more value the vote has. There are many considerations in this system including the relative authority of the site hosting the link, the actual link text, where the link is located, and the relevance of the site to your site.
We can plan out a good linking strategy that will help define your site with the search engines. We do not deal in any unethical linking practices including link farming or link spam.
Reporting
We run monthly search engine ranking reports for all of our clients. Initially, we take a baseline search engine ranking report so that we can compare future reports and track trends. Without good reporting, there is no way to judge the success of the campaign. We will meet with you to explain the reports so that you may also track your progress. You will be able to track the progress of your SEO optimization from day 1. All TreeHouse SEO optimization campaigns come equipped with detailed ranking analysis including engine saturation, trending, and archived reports.
User Experience and SEO
It is a common misconception that modern SEO technology conflicts with the user experience on a site. We firmly believe if the search engine optimization specialist working on your project is skilled and experienced, there is no need to sacrifice the user experience on a site for search engine optimization. A well-planned SEO optimization campaign takes both the search engine and the user into account. All sites should be targeted to both audiences. If your prospective SEO optimization company does not consider both in its campaign, then the site will be either lacking in the search engine ranking department or lacking in the leads the better search engine rankings bring in. Gearing your optimization efforts towards both audiences will maximize the return your company sees from its investment. TreeHouse employes only the best search engine optimization specialists in the industry to ensure an ethical SEO optimization campaign that provides better search engine rankings and maximum ROI.
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