Methodology

Methodology
Optimizing your website in specific ways will greatly increase the amount of traffic you receive. The tactic is called Search Engine Optimization; optimizing and making your website easily found and redirected to. A website is not a static entity and as such needs to be taken care of to ensure its maximum potential. Your website constantly needs to grow as the internet is ever changing. At StookeMedia we take into account how distinct your company is and use such to fuel our passion to researching your industry before even attempting work ourselves.


 * 1) 1. Preliminary
 * Interview (phone or face to face consultation)
 * At this point we form a better relationship and better understand who, or what, department to be in contact with for better communication.
 * Within this consultation we find out the short and long term plans of your business and website.
 * o What are your target numbers, your goals?
 * o What do you believe to be the potential of a website
 * o How do you prefer to set up the webpage? Having it more content driven on the main page or subsequent one?
 * § Your homepage is usually the page with the highest level of competitiveness. The keywords it targets are usually the most challenging. It is important to be focused and define with as few terms as possible the core products or services of the client’s business. An example of a main term would be Toronto web design whereas secondary pages would target Toronto web design services. This will better help us narrow down and define keywords specific to your company.
 * Potential Problems you are having with the website, which direction do we need to gear towards to better help you?
 * o Does your website have a low traffic flow?
 * o Are trying to increase the sales of a specific product?
 * o Is your website based on people signing up?
 * The information used will help us plan our course of measure for your company
 * o How many posts, links, to be discussed further.
 * o The better we understand your business specifics and how you distinguish yourself the better we can key work optimize.
 * To finish it off StookeMedia will explain the philosophy of SEO work.
 * o The philosophy here is to develop a plan that will allow us to have enough water for 100 seeds. Our clients will grow roots if we water 5 of those for 20 days rather than all of them for 1 day. SEO needs to follow a similar planned focus.

Let us ask the question; Why does Google rank one website at position #1 on the first page of the search engine results page and then another company which does the same thing on page 5? Google runs as a computer does based on algorithms. Google considers itself an authority. Google considers them the to be subject matter expert, rather the experts at finding the experts of a subject matter; and this applies for everyone locally. That’s the goal of our optimization initiative. To make a website //the// subject matter expert in their topical neighborhood.

-Age of Site.
 * 1) 2. Detailed Report
 * Construct and provide a detailed report of
 * o Current internet standing / Page Rank
 * o Inbound and Outbound links to websites
 * o Inbound and Outbound links of competitors websites
 * o List of keywords used on your site to start.
 * § These may be subject to change as Google identifies different search patterns.
 * Website Usability Assessment
 * o We assess the experience on the website and point our potential flaws which make visit ors leave. These flaws are based on statics gathered from various online case studies as well as our own.
 * o Other aspects in this section pertain to ease of navigation and interface.
 * Provide a Website Structural Analysis
 * o Includes and in depth look at the overall design and flow, geared specifically to optimize visitors and traffic around the website.
 * o Quality report on things such as uneven colours, bad links, etc.
 * o We look at Meta and heading tags and make sure they are keyword friendly.
 * 1) 3. Evaluate Keywords
 * Specific studies on which words to use for your website based upon Google acquired data querying users’ local searches. Maximizing these keywords leads to increased traffic flow to your website.
 * o What are the top 20 keywords that define your industry, product or service?
 * o The keywords will be specific for your desired targeted products or popular brands, as well as more generally used keywords.
 * o Geographic region will be taken into effect and which keywords your city specifically requires.
 * § http://www.seounique.com/blog/iphone-google-results-ahead/
 * Analyze the competitiveness of the keywords in relation to one another, along with geographic location
 * We evaluate the keywords of your competitors and take into account best practises to achieve higher results.
 * o Notice which companies might be taking up YOUR desired keywords.
 * o If you could please provide us with a list of your top competitors or companies; both online and offline. It enables us to better understand and form a strategy for our SEO program. Creating this list does several important things: First it gets our client’s involved in the SEO process. Secondly it helps further establish their goals. Most importantly, it gives a better understanding of our clients’ business.
 * Once the master list of Keywords is created by doing basic Google Keyword Tool searches using clients keywords, then going further by recognizing patterns in ways people search, we then finalize all keywords and search terms for site optimization and content development.
 * 1) 4. Site Optimization
 * Construction of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When Google displays its results the title is the first thing you see.
 * Ensure that Meta Tags correspond to keywords selected
 * o This is done for each page specifically paralleling each keyword specifically.
 * § Content to correspond later with the heading when looked at under Content Analysis.
 * Ensure there is only one H1 [heading] tag per page. If not this greatly reduces the legitimacy it bears towards Google crawlers.
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 * Ensure that HTML coding uses sound tactics of keyword placement
 * o Ensure that there are no spider / crawler traps. These include bad html links, redirects to black hat domains.
 * Competition Analysis. By understanding the links of your competitor’s websites, accomplished through the latest software (PR Prowler, and furthermore), we can create realistic targets for the client.
 * o For instance, we may recommend marketing process based on keywords for the immediate future as opposed to one that will be more challenging to be reached over time; all based on your goals for your website derived in the preliminary meeting.
 * Link Structure
 * o By this point we should have an excellent understanding of the targeted terms for the client’s site. When developing the link structure it is important to create commonalities among all relevant parties to grow your web presence.
 * We will review the above elements, and combine the needs of the SEO process with those of the process of web design. SEO and web design must complement each other to make for a successful website.
 * 1) 5. Content Analysis
 * We still explore the different mediums which can be effectively utilized for your web presence. These may include but are not limited to; html, *.doc, *.pdf, video, flash, any image file, etc.
 * The site content, either written by you or us, will be analyzed and ensure that the parallelism between the site content and keywords is upheld.
 * The content on each page requires it to fit the heading and page title, moreover we assess if there are sufficient amount of keywords to backup said headings within the context of the page.
 * o Depending on the size of the website, the sub-pages will allow you to develop keyword themes. When doing this optimization, StookeMedia uses our SEO Checklist. Though SEO requires precision it not the case that things have to be precise. It is better to make the text natural then be worried about having exactly 8-20% keyword density. Both the user and the search engines will appreciate more natural text – and we believe that SEO requires finesse and prefer to avoid using tools to do the work.
 * o We generally stick the rule of one keyword phrase per page. We found that it better helps the Google crawlers as they like efficient detailed content.
 * o The first couple sentence of search paragraph should be keyword filled for whichever keyword was selected for the heading.
 * o There should be a different title, description and first sentence on each page.
 * o Long vs shorter titles?
 * o Quality content will bring people back and as people always want to tell others about a good thing it will get you forward links from other sites. Your content should be written with your keyword phrases in mind. As it is always quality over quantity too. However within SEO practises quality always leads to more links, referrals, leading to the quantity coming.
 * 1) 6. Continuous Link Building / Web 2.0
 * Our goal is to get your website connected within your industry and increase your search engine rankings at the same time. In result you will gain targeted traffic from both related authority sites and the search engines.
 * o There are many strategies that can be applied, and some are more common than others, as well are more Google and Search engine friendly. Either you pay for top Google spot and/or links or you provide quality content in exchange for getting other websites to link to you or vice versa. We Take care of this for you by having our writers provide quality highly relevant content to your website and internet discourse surrounding your industry.
 * This section pertained entirely to the concept that the internet is an ever growing organic mechanism which needs to be nurtured to the best of our ability. Once your website is uploaded for everyone to see it isn’t as though it’s a billboard on the side of the highway, there are specific ways in which your website needs to be found.
 * By constantly monitoring inbound and outbound links of you and your competitors we are able to distinguish which sites Google and other search engines hold with high relevancy pertaining to your industry.
 * o There are many factors which we analyze before building each link.

- Inbound link profile.

- Link placement on page.

- Relevant text around link.

- Relevant content on overall website.

- Co-citation (related topical neighborhood).

- Authority of the outbound links on page.

- PageRank.

- Alexa rating.

- Homepage vs Subpage (which is more relevant/powerful?).

- Avoidance of Link traps like no follows, redirects, etc.
 * Each link on another site back to your own counts as a vote. Each vote is weighted differently according to different search engines but the basic concept is there. What ranks one site higher is the amount of votes they receive in and among their web presence thus creating the illusion that they are the most knowledgeable. Search engines take into account other aspects like keyword content density to weed out sites strictly used for hosting link after link; considered black hat SEO tactics.
 * Posting Web2.0 Content
 * o For your website to be considered legitimate it requires up to date information, and as such requires up to date information from sites linking to you. If both cases are satisfied then Google, or other search engines, will consider you a prominent speaker on your subject matter.
 * o Posting content, whether it be Blog, forum, newsletter, etc, must be consistent to have any weight on the crawler rankings. The most prominent website for this is Facebook, followed by Twitter, LinkedIn, googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com, and many more not in any specific order include; BlogSpot, Live journal, Blogger, any forum having relevant up to date information, Digg, SEO chats, YouTube, Flickr, BNI Strategic Partners, etc.
 * § The Goal is to get your web presence out there. The more links and posts created on your behalf in the right palaces the more knowledgeable Google believes you to be and the higher placement you get within the search engine. Every post helps, having a signature with your company name within any industry forum, review, referral, comments section, replies, and discussion boards.
 * o We post and analyze other posts because they too need to adhere to specific keywords containing the keyword specific content.
 * o Any articles that the client supplies will be posted to hundreds of news and article directories across the internet.
 * o Web2.0 Content is the content which due to lack of time your company is unable to create on the internet. Let StookeMedia take care of that for you.
 * Indexing and Directories: We have established a vast network of online assets that we can utilize to promote websites. These areas of the internet contain thousands of blogs and websites covering almost every industry out there. These networks allow us to obtain quality links for your website.
 * o We will start by creating a Google sitemap to ensure proper and efficient crawling.
 * o Your website will be uploaded to various directories, such as but not included are DMOZ. It should be noted that only sites that Google and other search engines find legitimate will be used. StookeMedia is in no affiliation with black hat tactics. The purpose of uploading to these directories is that crawlers search, in fact have these whole directories downloaded constantly, allowing for readily available up to date information on anything pertaining to your company.
 * o The proper launch of a site is important. If design changes were involved with the SEO work, then it is important that when the new version of a site goes live that 301 redirects are in place if necessary so old pages will not be lost. Remember the search engines will generally find new sites and sites which were just newly optimized will be indexed over time. To help with the promotion of the new version of the site, we can recommend online press releases or social bookmarks. Ideas about web 2.0 will be discussed in the next section. The idea is to give the crawlers a means to find the new content quickly and give the new content established link popularity. Using Google sitemaps makes the process of indexing the new content quick as well and Google site maps should be used whenever possible.
 * This is an ongoing effort which will enhance the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links you receive from other web resources.


 * 1) 7. Constant Ranking Check and Evaluation Report
 * We will constantly monitor the standing of your company within the Google and other search engines search results and provide bi weekly, monthly reports.
 * We will have a history of where your rank for the specific period.
 * Moreover see how your website has been fairing against your competition.

Final Word

There’s no fixed solution here. Every company is unique, and every SEO campaign has to be unique, too. Knowing our client’s goals, their available resources, and their intended audience will help us choose the right strategies and tactics for the SEO campaign. Be careful not to try too much at the start. It’s better to move slowly and do a few things very well than to spread your company so thin that the campaign as a whole suffers from lack of accomplishment –remember the watering seeds analogy.