Besides offering website developer services I can also help you work towards increasing your website's page ranking with the four major search engines.

After your website has been completed and is open to the public you're still not really done. What's left is the never ending task of maintaining a decent ranking on the four major search engines. Unfortunately for you it's a lot like working on the engine in your car. You can try and 'fix' it yourself or higher a professional. Eventually you'll either give up or you'll bring in a someone with experience.  SEM & SEO is something every website needs and you should budget for it if you want your site to have a chance at being successful.  Typically after the initial optimization I would want to spend 1 - 2 hours a week performing SEO, SEM and traffic analysis on your website.  I would also like to point out that several weeks to a couple of months will pass before you see some payoff from investment in SEO/SEM.  This is due to how long it can take the search engines to find your website even if you do submit your site to the major search engine sites.

What is search engine optimization, or SEO, and why is it important? Every second of every day some search engine is looking at a website trying to figure out where it should rank on the search engine site. The problem occurs when the search engine is trying to read your website. It uses specific rules and if your site doesn't follow those rules you will not be ranked well.

I can review any website - even ones I did not perform the website development - and make changes that will make it much more search engine friendly. Depending on the size of the site I normally need an hour per page to properly optimize the site.

What if your site is already showing up on the first page of Google?  Make sure you're using the type of search that your customer would use.  For instance if your customer is Wyle E. Cyote and he needs a new rocket to strap to his back he may not know to go to www.acme.com.  But he does know to type in "personal rocket pack" in his browser.  If Acme pops up on the first page of the search engine results with that type of search then Acme's website is properly optimized.

What about Search Engine Marketing? In a nutshell this is signing up with a search engine to display ads about your products or services. On one search engine, Google, there is an array of other free offerings that I take adavntage of as well. These include Google Base which allows me to upload all of your products and services and make them searchable on Google within 24 hours after submission.  Here's an example of a results page on Google if you search for Polywood Captains Bar Stool.

 

So what?  It can take several weeks  to a couple of months for a search engine to find your site.  So getting your product in front of potentially thounsands of eyes in 24 hours or less is phenominal!  Google maps also supports adding your brick-and-mortar address to it's index.  If some one does a search for "pizza parlors Elkton Maryland" and your pizzaria is listed with Google maps your website address will show up in the returned search results along with a map showing the location of your brick-and-mortar location.  Again, Google doesn't need to find your site for you to be found this way.  I can register your website and it's 'location' with Google and in a few days you'll be searchable.