Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies can get you good search engine placement for your keywords.  Great SEO companies first make sure you are dealing with the right keywords and then get you great Search Engine Placement.

This sounds obvious and indeed it is obvious.  The challenge lies in putting it into practice.  You are probably thinking how challenging could this be, Chris give me an example.  I love examples and here is a great one.

I recently had a Webdesign, SEO meeting with one of our large IT Clients who happens to be an Orthopedic surgery center.  We sat down with the management staff and discussed the usual, how flashy should the site be, how practical should the site be, what administrative features could affect, in a positive way, the business processes of the company (yes, we always talk about this with our Web Design/SEO customers).  All these topics where integrated with an eye for SEO.

Prior to the meeting I had researched and compiled 45 keywords that I felt would be relevant for this company.  Things like bone doctor, spine surgeon, ankle doctor, sports doctor, and relevant local versions of those keywords.  As we were discussing the fundamentals of the website it dawned one me that although these keywords were very appropriate and valuable to the client they were not the most valuable terms we could have selected.  It turns out that the most valuable terms were not terms geared toward customers.  The most valuable terms would be those that are geared toward other doctors, in the hopes of getting them to refer patients. 

You can understand that having the website land one doctor who continuously refers patients to my client had significant value.  Now we put together the best set of keywords, those keywords that not only drive relevant traffic to the site but actually drive the most valuable relevant traffic to the site.

Make sure you choose the right SEO company.  Your company deserves the best!!

 Chris Burres

KeyWords:
Houston SEO, Houston Orthopedic Surgeon, SEO Company Houston

One of our clients Rattan Furniture (www.rattanshowcase.com), in Houston Texas, was interested in doing search engine optimization (SEO).  This particular clients had a single page, we call it a business card, website for 3 years.  The website did very well in the Houston area as they are the only Rattan furniture store in Houston.  Actually they seem to be the only Rattan furniture store in the region.  She was looking to increase the number of clients that she was already receiving from surrounding cities such as Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Beaumont.  She was also looking to increase the number of clients from surrounding states like Oklahoma and Louisiana all while maintaining good search engine placement in Houston.  Since she only had a “business card” website I was concerned about their budget and willingness to actually pursue this type of campaign.

 I sat down with the owner and we started brain storming about costs associated with placing a single ad in a newspaper in each of those cities and quickly realized that she would be spending hundreds of dollars per month in each city.  We also talked about how difficult (almost impossible) it would be to track the efficacy of those ads.  It was very clear that there would be no more cost effective way to attract customers from those areas than to pursue a Search Engine Optimization campaign.   To start with she needed to invest in expanding her website so that it would have sufficient content, both photos and text, to be appealing both to the search engines that would send her traffic and to the individuals who arrived at her website.  Once this was completed we began the process of optimizing her pages for search engine placement. 

As of the writing of this article she has already achieved 1^st place for four of the selected keywords.  As we move forward I will continue to up date this document.

Update: Now 8 of her 15 keywords are in the top 3 on Google, most of the remaining are on the first page.

1. Total Files – each web page will have a number of files involved in displaying that page.  For instance if you have a page with two images, each time someone view the page the Total Files count will go up by 3.  1 file for the page with the text and 2 files for the two images on that page.
2. Total Pages – this would be the individual web pages that were viewed.  So if a use visited your site and clicked through three of your pages then the Total Pages would be incremented by 3.
3. Total Visits – This is the number of individuals (defined by unique IP addresses) that have visited your site.  This can get a little complicated but is an educated and very reasonable guess.
4. Total Unique Sites – This is the number of unique places (defined by unique IP addresses) that have visited your site.  For your current statistics this is the same as Total Visits.  This would change if multiple people, how are in the same neighbor hood using Road Runner visited your site.  In this case you might have two visitors who showed up as the same “site”
5. Total Unique URLs - This is something we’re not entirely sure of, but this is what we THINK it is… These are URLs on your website that have been requested by browsers. We think it would count as a unique URL whenever a visitor clicks on a special link generated by a CGI script, which could make the Total Unique URLs number higher than the actual number of HTML pages in your website. It’s probably not a very significant statistic - we’re not sure why anyone would be interested in it. ;-.
6. Total Unique Referrers – This is somewhat interesting because it includes any URL from which a visitor came to your website. For example, if they click on a link on some other site to come to yours, the “referrer” would be that other website with a link to yours. On the other hand, it also could just be when someone is looking at another page and types in your url or goes to your site via their own bookmark, so you could get “referrers” that are totally unrelated. It will include URLs of sites that have links to your page, search engines where people found your site in the search results, etc..
7. Total Unique User Agents – A User Agent is the type of browser they were using when they visited your website.  If everyone who visited your site was using the same version of Internet Explorer then Total Unique User Agents would be 1. 
8. Hits by Response Code – These are the codes that the server responds with when a request of the server is made for your site.  Here are the definition of the codes.
   1. Code 200 – Page requested and sent no problem
   2. Code 206 Partial content – Page requested some of the page was sent.  This would happen if a user requests a page and then presses stop before the whole page is displayed on his computer
   3. Code 301 – These have to do with pages that have been moved on the site.
   4. Code 304 Not Modified – This is when a user requests the same page and it is displayed to the user from a cache on their computer and not resent from the web server.
   5. Code 401 Unauthorized – This is when a user is requesting to view directory that is not available and does not authorize any activity without a password.
   6. Code 404 Not found – This is when a user is requesting a page that does not exist.
9. Top 7 of 7 Entry pages – This is the list of pages where people first entered your website. Most people will visit your website from your main (Default.htm) page or your default directory(/).  This would be important if you where getting a lot of traffic and no inquiries and you realized that the number 1 entry page was a legal disclaimer or something.  In that case we would know that we need to make a more fluid transition from that legal disclaimer page to the informative part of your website.
10. Top 10 of 12 exit pages – This is the last page a particular user viewed before leaving your website.  Again this would be useful if we realized that we had a page that was actually driving users away from your website.
11. Top 30 of 31 Total Sites – This is how people get to your site.  You see that many people visit from AOL, Road Runner or Time Warner.  I have never used this particular statistic.

In general I track and use two pieces of information.  Referrers and Search Strings.  If one website is sending me a lot of traffic I will contact them, thank them, and see if there is anything I can do to help them or to get an even better location on their website.  Search strings I use to better understand the customers that visit my website.  This is actually something that Andy and his SEO guys use, although they have their own version.