Gozooko

SEO  - What it is and What You Need to Know About It

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of improving search results for your web site in search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Improved search engine results drive more traffic to your site, and as we know more traffic means more sales.

So how does SEO work? SEO helps make your site more search engine friendly. It is accomplished by taking the urls of your site that normally looks like this http://www.n-finiplaywear.com/product_info.php?products_id=2959,  which doesn't mean much to a search engine and turns them into this http://www.n-finiplaywear.com/p2959/Active-2-Ply-Sports-Bra-Style-%23300/product_info.html.  In the second url, the difference is the name of the item is in the title (Active 2 Ply Sports Bra). Both links will take you to the same place but to Google and Yahoo they say different things.  The second url will drive more traffic to your site.  Meta description and Meta keyword fields (both are considered Meta Data) may also come into play, but not as much as they used to.  Google and Yahoo caught onto how people were manipulating their systems using Meta Data and so they changed their systems to base their results off real content. It is much more difficult to "trick" the search engines than it was in the past.  One of the things we have done at Gozooko to enhance SEO for our customers are to replace generic image names with product names. This increases the SEO opportunity level by 300% as each item has three thumbnail images (small, medium, large).  This is all done automatically with no extra effort for our customers.

There are some things you need to watch out for with SEO's.  There are many so called Search Engine Optimizers out there looking to take your hard earned money.  Some of them will tell you they have a relationship with Google and that they will make you number one in Google searches.  Google states they do not have any special relationships with anyone when it comes to rankings in their search engine and you can't pay Google to improve your spot with them.  If you ask the SEO to describe how they will achieve results for you and they are not forth coming, then look somewhere else. There is no reason not to tell you how they will accomplish this because the real work is in the execution not in the method, and most people cannot execute SEO on their own.

Costs for an SEO to help you optimize your site can range from a few hundred to many thousand dollars. This can be a risky proposition no matter how much you spend because there is no guarantee of results. To help you not get taken for a ride Google has posted on their site some good questions to ask an SEO (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291):

• Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
• Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
• What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?
• How do you measure your success?
• What's your experience in my industry?
• What's your experience in my country/city?
• What's your experience developing international sites?
• What are your most important SEO techniques?
• How long have you been in business?
• How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

Gozooko customers do not have to worry about any of this as SEO is built into  our Gozooko Web Services products. You pay nothing extra.  Your site is fully search engine optimized.  All you have to do is submit your site to Google for their site crawlers to go through your site and get into their search engines.  A great feature our Gozooko product line has that many others do not is the ability to have a splash page and still get crawled by Google or Yahoo. This is important because many times a search engine will stop crawling your site if it hits a splash page, resulting in nothing getting into the search engine. We also continually enhance SEO in our product line so our customer's results in the search engines have the opportunity to always improve.

Remember, without an SEO enhanced site you are definitely missing out on sales opportunities.

If you have any topics you would like to see addressed in this column, or have any questions, please send us an email at GozookoGuys@gozooko.com