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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategic process designed to make your website more visible to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AOL, AltaVista and Bing. The goal is to receive high rankings based on words and phrases (keywords) your visitors would type into their search engine.

Search engines have created an opportunity for smart companies to outperform their competitors regardless of size. The high cost, declining audience, and short-run of other advertising mediums such as print, TV and radio simply cannot compete.

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) should be your base for a long term Internet marketing strategy. We look at SEO as a natural evolution for a well constructed website. A good SEO strategy combines the on-page technical aspect (coding and page content), web marketing (using other websites to promote your site) and the human aspect (traditional marketing and networking) in a balanced manner. SEO is a major consideration in developing the structure, the theme, the code and the content of your site. We believe that if websites are developed with useful and honest content that is relevant to your industry or organization and optimized correctly, they will be ranked highly in search engines' organic listings which are free. This is a very cost-effective method of advertising.

Google deserves special attention as it is currently the most popular search engine in use (see diagram below). We will utilize many tools and design approaches to optimize your site to achieve high rankings with Google.

What will Mintaka Design do to help with SEO?

The tactics required to achieve high search engine rankings are complex and ever-changing. Among other activities we will:

1. Identify and use the appropriate set of keywords in your content by working with your staff, analyzing competitor web sites and using state-of-the-art tools;

2. Structure the navigation, links and content to present your content honestly and with maximum exposure to search engines.
3. Code title and description meta tags of your web page;

4. Develop site maps and robot files for easy indexing by search engines;
5. Use keywords as links;
6. Name site files with search engine friendly titles;
7. Code ALT tags for images;
8. Convert PDF files to HTML, where appropriate;
9. Analyze information gathered from your site statistics and Google Analytics to improve your traffic;

What can you do to help with SEO and improve the visibility of your site?

1. Keep your content fresh! Activity on your website attracts the attention of search engines. Consider a news section or a blog. Post specials and new events.
2. Help MIntaka Design identify keywords by conducting internal brainstorming sessions among employees.
3. Promote your website off-line through your print materials.
4. Develop an effective linking strategy:

Inbound Links This type of link will help you increase your site's relevance and page rank. Identify high quality websites that relate to your business or organization and request that they create a link from their website to yours. The development of Google achieved better results for many searches with an innovation called PageRank. This iterative algorithm ranks web pages based on the number and PageRank of other websites on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others. Consider approaching businesses in your supply chain, organizations and associations to which you belong and directory sites such as chambers of commerce to request links to your site. As the the number of incoming links increases, so does the frequency of indexing for your pages. This means a greater value for your most current content.
External Links Create links on your website to other websites that pertain to your field. It enhances your content and shows that your site has relevant content.
Reciprocal Links In requesting a website link to you, you may receive a request to link back. This is fine and useful, if the site is relevant to yours.