SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is process of analyzing keywords, reviewing search trends, analyzing link popularity, building code tags, analyzing your competition, optimizing pages within your website to be search engine friendly, editing web pages, submissions to directories and search engines, and reciprocal link building…just to name a few.

What you are after with SEO is not getting highest number of website visitors. What you are actually seeking are qualified site visitors who have an interest in buying what you’re selling. Professional SEO can help deliver a targeted audience to your business. After all, what would you rather have? 500 site visitors with a 1% conversion rate or 100 site visitors with a 10% conversion rate?

Professional SEO is critical to your company’s web presence so if your site was designed by your summer intern in 2002 or your bookkeeper’s son as part of his high school “media class”, I assure you that you have some work to do.

Start with a good website design featuring good content and navigation. Then, utilize an SEO professional who can wring most out of your website and deliver dollars to your doorstep.

Allan Gunnneson is the CEO of Gunner Web Group (www.gunnnerweb.com), a website design and marketing company based in Kansas.

The first thing to do is plan ahead and get your site into Sandbox as soon as possible, so attracting this attention from Google. Don't wait until your website is built in all its glory before registering a domain name and uploading your site. Instead make sure first thing you do is register your domain name, set up a hosting account and go live with one or two pages explaining what your site is about and what can be expected from it as it develops.

Next get Googlebot to visit these embryonic pages so that Google is aware of new site as soon as possible. There is no need to submit your site manually or repeatedly to search engines, a couple of inbound links (IBL's) from other sites that are regularly spidered will be sufficient to get Googlebot calling. Once robots have paid an initial visit they will return.

You may be lucky and find that your site gets straight into main SERPS, but if it is a new domain name and new site then it is likely that before long you will find your new creation in Sandbox where it will receive a great deal of attention from Googlebot. Now is time to be proactive with your website development, don't sit back patiently waiting to be released from Sandbox, instead make most of your time in there and show Google potential of your website.

Content is King

The first thing you need to do is continue development of your website. Regularly add new pages packed full of relevant content to your site. As far as search engines are concerned, 'content is king'. Search Engines exist to provide their users with links to content relevant to their search criteria, therefore they are always on lookout for websites that contain plenty of good quality, regularly updated relevant content. Of course, good quality, relevant content will also be beneficial to your websites human visitors, which at end of day is your number one priority. Add plenty of new, relevant content of interest to real visitors and Googlebot will thank you for it.

There are numerous ways to generate inbound links and I have covered these in previous articles. However, things rarely stand still for long in world of Search Engine Optimisation and latest research seems to suggest that simply getting huge amounts of IBL's whilst in Sandbox may no longer be sufficient. It now seems that rate of accumulation of IBL's may be important. Google is now thought to pay attention to rate of accumulation of IBL's and expects to see them develop in what it considers a natural, organic manner. This means that suddenly gaining a huge number of inbound links may be frowned upon by Google. Instead your linking strategy should be a sustained effort aimed at gaining new IBL's from relevant websites over a long period of time.

Summary

Although Google Sandbox is still a frustrating inevitability and there is no quick fix way limit amount of time a website spends confined to it, patiently sitting by waiting for this confinement to end is a waste of what could be a golden opportunity. Google pays a lot of attention to sites in Sandbox making confinement to Sandbox an ideal time to really let your website shine. During this time give Google what it wants to see; regularly updated relevant content, lots of new pages and a sustained increase in number of inbound links. Not only could this improve your sites ranking within SERPS once its confinement to Sandbox is over, but it will pay dividends for your site in general by providing its visitors with information they require.