FAQs for Search Engine Optimisation

What is Search Engine optimisation (SEO)?
Why is Search Engine optimisation important to my business?
Which Search engines do you work with?
What is the most used search engine?
What does page rank mean?
How long can it take to get high rankings?
How do search engines determine the ranking of my site?
What are spiders, robots and crawlers?
What are Meta keywords?

Do you guarantee high rankings?
How do I know your SEO service does not employ an un ethical approach?

What is Search Engine optimisation (SEO)?
Search Engine optimisation is the process of designing and executing a web site to be highly visible to all the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. This allows the website owner the opportunity to gain an added advantage on competitors and increase the volume of people in having exposure to their business.

Why is Search Engine optimisation important to my business?
Recent figures estimate that 70% of people use the Internet in the first instance to search for products and services that are not easily accessible within their immediate radius. These people are actively in the frame of mind to already purchase your product or contract your services and are therefore classified as a target audience. A well-built website or a properly executed Search Engine optimisation strategy allows you to be positioned high in the search rankings that are displayed to this audience leading to a higher chance that they will visit your site and turn into a potential lead or purchasing customer.

Which Search engines do you work with?
At Traffic Online Media Solutions work with the three major traffic-source-providing search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN with Google being the priority focus purely due to the high percentage of web users favouring this search engine as their primary choice when seeking services or products on the Internet.

What is the most used search engine?
Google.com and its locally based search engines is by far the most used search engine. It not only contains a wealth of information related to your particular search it is now incorporated as standard in most new browser toolbars making it easily accessible. Google also powers most smaller search engines and is estimated to provide 300 million searches per day.

What does Page Rank mean?
Page rank is a Google term and numeric value based system that is focused on link popularity and how important a particular page is on the web. Page rank is awarded on a scale of 0-10. And calculated on votes given to links on a web page and the number of incoming quality links pointing to that web page. A vote determines how important a page must be, the more links incoming (or votes) cast against that page help Google define a higher page rank importance.

How long can it take to get high rankings?
This is not an easy question to answer. There are many determining factors to gaining high rankings, two of the most important are: 1. Your site build. If your site is built poorly, has bad core coding, does not adhere to modern construction standards, has poorly written textual content or irrelevant textual content, poor density of keywords and no meta data or title tags then you cannot expect to rank highly in a short time frame. 2. Lack of incoming links. Incoming links that validate your website from reputable sources allow search engines to establish that your site has been deemed by others knowledgeable in your particular field that it is either rich in relevant information or visual content and therefore has credible worth to be listed highly.

Traffic Online Media Service offer pre-SEO project consultation that allows you to understand when you can expect to see tangible results through our strategies. This consultation and proposed timings are calculated individually for each client's individual needs, dependent on whether they already have a current online presence, or if it is a brand new web initiative yet to be launched.

How do search engines determine the ranking of my site?
It is generally understood that you cannot pay search engines to rank your site highly in an organic listing. You can however pay for sponsored listings using pay-per-click methods. Search engines give priority rankings to sites based on closely-guarded complex algorithms which analyse your site for data quality and relevancy of content incorporated within. At Traffic we invest heavily - in terms of time and research - into working with these algorithms to help your site achieve the best possible location in major search engines for industry-specific search terms and keywords.

What are spiders, robots and crawlers?
These are computer programs that repeatedly scan the World Wide Web in a methodical and automated manner. Search engines in particular use these programs as a means of providing up-to-date data on web pages and logging this data into their search databases. If you own a website or are thinking of building one you can expect a visit from these types of programs.

What are Meta Keywords?
The "meta keywords" tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with the rest of what you've written on your site. One way to use the meta keywords tag is to emphasize a particular word or phrase in the main body of your text. For example, if you own a website about made-to-order suits, and want to reinforce the word "bespoke", what you would do is ensure that that word is scattered liberally and strategically throughout your web copy, and also inserted into your Meta keywords.

Another option is to insert unusual words or synonyms into your Meta keywords tags that you don't actually have on the page itself. For instance, if you are a Star Wars fan and have a website about collectible Star Wars toys, a good idea would be to put George Lucas's name in your keyword Meta tags. This would increase the odds of someone stumbling upon your page while they were originally looking for George Lucas. To increase the odds of people stumbling upon your site while looking for info related to Mr. Lucas we would include his name throughout your whole web-copy.

Do you guarantee high rankings?
Once contracted, Traffic Online Media Solutions are aiming to get you the highest possible rankings for your particular site and related search terms and keywords. We do not guarantee page 1 rankings unless we deem that your existing site is capable of reaching this. High rankings result from consistent and dedicated ethical approaches to optimising your site on and off page. We employ a number of techniques to achieve this, all of which is illustrated in our written proposal to you. Some clients who instruct our services achieve high rankings in the first few months because they already have a well-built site rich in content, while others can take many months to achieve this objective. We aim to reduce the time frame to high rankings by providing suggestions on improving your site at each and every opportunity. Our track record and collective experience proves our adeptness in this business. For this reason we expect clients to listen to our suggestions and incorporate them into their strategy for achieving high search rankings.

How do I know your SEO service does not employ an unethical approach?
Traffic Online Media Solutions never use unethical Search Engine optimisation practices. Fact. 'Black hat' search engine optimisation practices are not something we partake in. By 'Black hat' we refer to methods such as page cloaking, page jacking, duplicating content, keyword stuffing, spamming keywords and using link farms. We advise that you closely scrutinise any search engine optimisation vendors approach before you enlist their services, paying close attention that they do not employ such methods. Apart from being ineffectual for long-term high rankings it could also result on your site being removed from search listings altogether. Traffic Online is sometimes asked by clients to apply these methods purely just to boost their site rankings faster, if these requests persist we would typically terminate the business relationship. We do not believe in 'Black hat' methods nor do we wish to jeopardise our good reputation; two good reasons for you to feel confident that with Traffic everything is always above board.