We work to educate and include our clients in the campaign process from the beginning.
Our clients’ reputations should embody them, first and foremost. The content that we generate and promote is authentic to our clients’ voices and images.
Although it has become a prominent component of most modern marketing campaigns, SEO remains a relatively new field, having only become mainstream within the last ten years. Because it is still such a young discipline, we’ve found that many clients have quite a few questions when first introduced to it.
Here are some answers to some common questions that helped us when starting out. We hope that you will find them helpful too, and that they clear up concepts that seem simple, but frequently cause confusion.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a collection of techniques that, when utilized in accord with each other, allows sites to become more visible in search results.
There are three principal search engines—Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Each uses a slightly different algorithm to determine the relevancy of results, and therefore displays results in differing orders. Each algorithm is highly complex, consisting of more than 200 distinctly weighted factors and making it nearly impossible to solve for the equations themselves. While the algorithm is unattainable, we have zeroed in on the most influential components, and are able to systematically affect them to produce favorable results.
What is DRM?
Within our industry, DRM stands for digital reputation management. DRM uses search engine optimization techniques to control how you are perceived.
It can also stand for digital rights management. When we use it, we are only referring to reputation, not rights, management.
What about SEO has changed recently?
Search engine optimization is an ever-changing field that has progressed rapidly within the last ten years. Search engines constantly tinker with their formulas, changing pieces to benefit themselves, hinder competitors, or combat optimizers who employ fraudulent techniques.
Metadata and keywords were the driving force behind the majority of search engine results ten years ago. These two components became far too easy to manipulate, forcing the engines to adjust as users overstuffed their content and misrepresented their sites in an effort to cheat the system. Search engines have responded by changing parameters and penalizing obvious shams.
The resulting landscape is far more intricate and multifaceted. The new SEO is ever changing, ever growing, and ever adapting. As such, we must constantly be changing, growing, and adapting with it.
What is the difference between "crawling" and "indexed"?
Search engines use bots called “crawlers” or “spiders” to navigate links and look through a site. The act of examining the individual pages is called “crawling.”
As crawlers sift through pages, they send cached versions to a database for storage, where the caches are indexed. The cached version remains in the search engine database until spiders are sent out again, allowing for an updated page to be indexed.
Why do links matter?
Search engines’ primary goal is to determine site relevancy to users’ search terms. Since intent is hard to measure, engines simplify the process by conflating popularity with relevancy. To determine popularity, search engines treat links as votes of confidence towards a site’s relevancy.
Internal links are links within a site that connect to another page on the same site. Inbound links originate on a separate site, but direct to the same content. Both are valuable for reputation campaigns.
The impact of links can be affected by many factors, including how many of them are on a page, the quality of the content from which inbound links originate, and the link’s “anchor text” (visible hyperlink). Paid links and spam adversely affect the optimization process.
How long does it take to see results?
SEO and DRM are not instantaneous processes. Initial action customarily takes 4-6 weeks before yielding measurable results, with continued progress throughout the process. Steady improvement follows over the course of several months.
SEO takes time no matter how it is applied. If you expect immediate results, you will be disappointed, whether you work with us or someone else. But we can guarantee that, given time and patience, our efforts will be successful.