I was approached by a new client with a small, but very interesting website called The Ouzo Papers. The website owner didn’t have a lot of projects for me but at Rhino Web Services no job is too big or too small. I reviewed his site and made some small optimizations and bug fixes for him.
The Church Of Ouzo has a bunch of original PDFs on there regarding certain passages of scripture and something known as the The Ouzo Prophecy.
This weekend while looking for a few things I needed around the house I noticed some SEO holes in some major websites:
Sites like Lowes and Williams-Sonoma sell hundreds and thousands of products. Ignoring simple SEO practices most likely hurts them in the rankings. According to most SEO experts the title tag has is generally the most important on-page SEO feature for the past several years and placing the a search query term or phrase in the title tag is extremely important.
Update: 12/15/09 – I double checked both these sites and neither one has taken advantage of optimizing their titles to increase their SEO values. I had contacted them both back in June as well. I guess they don’t like free traffic. 
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique to increase the ranking of any web page or website on search engines like Google or Yahoo, for a given keyword or keyword phrase search. A higher search rank will produce a higher result in the organic search results and generally more traffic to the web site from search keyword traffic. Organic search traffic is generally high quality and can be more easily converted into repeat visits or product purchases. As well higher rankings give your business and brand more exposure.
The basic tenant of Web marketing is to increase the traffic and awareness of any web site and their respective products and services on Internet. As well the more traffic you can receive for free from organic search results means you need to spend less on Search Engine Marketing (i.e. buying traffic)
On average Search drives an average of 50-75% of all visits to web sites. Therefore it is very important that search engines direct traffic to your site instead of others. This is where SEO comes into play: generating more traffic for your site.
Keyword Research: determining what to use keywords is a very important. Make a list of words and phrases that are related to your business and then use tools like Google Trends to determine which are the best for your business.
URL Format: having an easy to read URL structure makes it easier for search engine crawlers to determine how to read your site. It will also make it easier for users to remember subdirectories on your site so that they can go back directly. Ensure that the main keywords of your page are in the page name or URL structure. Also choosing a domain that is related to your business and its main keywords can be helpful.
Titles & Meta Tags: For titles try moving your brand name to the end and start your titles with the main words of your site or page. Meta Tags and Meta Descriptions should also be dynamic and customized to each page.
Content Optimization: Content of the webpage should be carefully written using the selected keywords effectively and should not cross 5-10% density amongst the total content of the webpage. Other factors are: wise usage of Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3), selective usage of bolding, italics, colors and intra-page hyperlinking on keywords and phrases.
Content Generation: Use a blog on your site to generate keyword rich articles about your site’s product or services. Not only will you be providing users with interesting information you will be generating text rich pages that search engine crawlers like to index.
Page structure: Most sites now use CSS or cascade style sheets. Make sure to use alt text for images, using headers and footer links. Consider using image sprites to increase page performance.
Site Map: Submit a site map to the major search engines and keep it updated. A visitor friendly (HTML) version and a machine friendly (XML) version will help search engines know where your pages are. Also be sure to use a robots.txt file to tell search engines what not to crawl.
I was checking out a site (Lakeland Vacation Gear) for a friend that sells bike racks and car carriers. While the site was pretty well optimized for search engines I did found some issues and some items to tweak.
Rhino Web Services is a full featured web site optimization company based in Charlotte, NC. I specialize in optimizing and building web sites that result in better organic search rankings and are easily updated and provide analytic metrics. Your site should not just work, it should work for you.
Featuring:
Do you want a basic web site that looks good? Starting at $250 for most 5 page web sites. Check out the portfolio. Choose a template and contact me. I’ll have you up and running with a great web site in a flash. Working on a budget. No problem. I have basic websites that will meet your needs and free hosting is available for most sites.
Is your web site easy to manage and update? No? When is the last time you updated your web site’s text and graphics? Is it too hard or too expensive to constantly ask your web designer to do it?
I can take your website and make it as easy to update as sending an email. It will be as easy to edit as a Word document. I build custom Websites powered by a free open source content publishing system called Wordpress.
WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
If you already have a website host that supports PHP and MySQL, I can install Wordpress. If not we can move your site to a host that does. Your site will look exactly the same to visitors, but you’ll have a Content Management System to simplify the editing process.
Do you already have a website but want to optimize it or need to know where your traffic is coming from or what you users are doing? Contract me to review your site, install an analytics package and suggest improvements and help you make them.
Ready to start buying traffic? Let me help you pick out keywords, wordsmith your text ads and optimize your campaign to get the most clicks for your dollars.
My rates vary depending on the job length, requirements and other variables. Total project costs will vary by your requirements and needs. If you need a new site or don’t yet have one, I can put together a team to design, develop, and implement your new solution. I have world wide resources that can take on any project. Billing can be done by the project or by the hour. No job is too big or too small.
Rhino Web Services 9716-B Rea Rd, Charlotte, NC |704-340-3515
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