Our Search Engine Optimization Process

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a term that describes the process of evaluating and revising a website for the purpose of achieving higher search engine results ranking for specific keywords and keyword phrases.

The process of SEO that we employ at Deerpath Web Design is quite extensive and involves working with many different aspects of your website.

Keyword Research

Knowing the best keywords and keyword phrases on which to base the content of your website is a crucial aspect of SEO that many people overlook. A website optimized for keywords that no one ever searches will make very little difference in the targeted traffic that a website receives.

At Deerpath Web Design, we work with you to get a general idea of the types of concepts and ideas that you would like to have your website built around. After researching the most common and popular keywords that represent those concepts, we present you with a list of the best keywords and keyword phrases around which to optimize your website. Because each page or section of a website represents a specific aspect of the overall website theme, we recommend that each page/section be optimized to a unique set of keywords and keyword phrases.

Meta Tags

Meta Tags make up part of the programming code on a web page that tells search engines what your site is about. They include things like your keyword list, a short description of your website, copyright information, the language of your website content, and a host of other tidbits about your website.  You don't see this information when you go to a website in your browser, but it is there, "behind the scenes," buried in the programming code.

In the beginning, meta tags were the focus of most website optimization. Over the past several years, much of the relevance of meta tags has been down-graded by search engines, so that they do not carry nearly as much weight in search results ranking as they once did. Yet, having proper meta tags on each page of your site is still an important part of SEO to communicate the proper information about your website to search engines.

Alt Tags

Every image on a website has the capability of communicating a message to the search engines about the content of your site. Embedded within the code, each image carries an "alt" tag, in which a description of the image and how it relates to the content can be placed. Using proper "alt" tags helps each web page communicate its content more effectively, while at the same time providing accessibilty to vision-impaired web visitors using specially adapted browsers.

Many people use "alt" tags to stuff their web page with keywords. Search engines consider this SPAM and have taken measures to exclude websites that employ this type of keyword stuffing. Therefore, proper use of "alt" tags is important, not only to help your rankings, but also to make sure that your site does not get blacklisted.

Navigation and Links

How a web visitor gets from page to page on your website plays an important role both for ease of use and for search optimization. Search engines consider a variety of different aspects of your navigation links, including where they are placed, how they appear, and what they are linked to, among other things.

Choose Deerpath Web Design...get results that make a difference.

Serving West Michigan since 2001.