If you’re a little confused when it comes to SEO, you’re not alone. The evolution of the Internet has left many people scrambling to keep up with new terms and capabilities on the web.

Search engine optimization is a new internet marketing tool that combines knowledge of how search engines work with research into what keywords and phrases people use when searching online.

For example, if you were to go on Google and search for a roofing company in St. Augustine, you might type in “St. Augustine roofers” while someone else would type “Saint Augustine roofers” and another person would type “St. Johns County Roofing Contractors.” Skilled SEO professionals can sift through all of these terms and find out exactly how many people each month search for what specific terms.

Shh! Don’t tell Google.

So if people search for tons of different variations of the same keywords, then you’re thinking you should just optimize your website for all of those, right? Wrong. Search engines don’t like being taken advantage of. They want their results to be totally organic, a genuine index of what the Internet has to offer on any particular subject. If you try to incorporate too many keywords into your copy, the search engines think of it as “keyword stuffing” and will punish your site’s rankings accordingly.

Generally, it’s best to keep your keywords to maybe five or six, depending on how large your website is. Larger sites with more content have more room to add keywords, which is why we recommend that all of our clients have at least 300 – 400 words of text on their home page.

Where do the keywords go on my website?

After you’ve selected your important keywords and phrases, they have to be incorporated throughout your website in various places. A few of the search engines consider criteria in certain areas to be more important than others—for example, they might consider what’s written on the home page to be more important than what’s written on a sub-page.

A little bit of art, a little bit of science.

Professional search engine optimization has many layers. There is an art in making keywords and phrases so subtle that anyone reading your content won’t notice awkward sentences or redundancies. But it also takes extensive research and a constant effort to keep up with the changing trends of the industry. While some individuals have the time to devote to optimization themselves, for many of our clients their time is better spent practicing the skills that run their business. That’s why we’re here to help.

I’m interested, but need more help.

If you’d like to find out more about optimizing your website, you can get started today with a free SEO evaluation by calling us at (904) 829-2772 or send us an email at letusmarketyou@oldcity.com.