Guest Post Provided by Pierre Zarokian of Submit Express

Search engine optimization is a process wherein you place specific keywords in your articles or in your website to help you get on top of search engine rankings. If you have an online business and you want to improve traffic to make more money and to attract new customers, SEO is the answer.

One of the things that you should do to be on top of search engine rankings is to regularly monitor your current ranking. By doing this, you can protect your current standing and make necessary adjustments if needed to reach the top.

Another way for you to increase your ranking is to place keywords which relate to your website strategically on your pages and title tag. This will make you more SEO friendly. You should also be careful as to not to commit keyword stuffing to prevent the spiders from ignoring your website. In general using a keyword up to 3-5 times per 100 words is a good practice.

A very common SEO  strategy is link to your most important internal pages from your main page. This strategy will increase the traffic in your website, especially in pages where visitors rarely get in. You should also make sure that your site navigation can is spider friendly. A good practice is provide text menu links on the bottom of your site

Also, domain names with keywords in them, may have a better advantage. So if you are starting a new website, consider registering a domain with keywords in it.

Finally, don’t forget about link building. The more links to your website from external websites, the better your rankings will be. There are many things you could do to improve your links. Writing articles and submitting them to other sites for publication is one of the best ways, such as what we have done here to improve our own link building. If you have a good website which is content rich, naturally more people will link to it as well.  Consider posting articles on your website or start a blog. Press release writing and distribution is also a great idea. Not only it may result in some traffic, but it will also build some back links once you get some coverage.

With so many web designers out there it is very challenging to tell which designer or company is a good company, unless you do some research and are a little technical savvy. Here we will provide you some guidelines on how to find a good web design company.

1- Make sure the company you are picking knows exactly what you want and could deliver all the technical requirements. Often times if you pick an individual web designer, he may be good in graphic design, but not the back end development, often required for more advanced websites that have shopping carts, forms or applications. Make sure you pick a designer that is good in both or has resources to deliver both.

2-Talk to at least 3-5 companies before you pick one. Ask a lot of questions. Check their prices, features and portfolio.

3- Check to see who your competitor used. Often times the name of web designer might be in the footer of the website or may be in the source code.

4- Ask for references and their portfolio. See if they have designed similar websites to what you want in the past.

5- Check the name of the company in the search engines and use next to them words like “scam,” “fraud,” “complaints,” and “rip off.”  If any unsatisfied clients have posted anything negative about them, you may be able to find out this way.

6- Check BBB Better Business Bureau. Most companies doing business over one years should have a profile and customer feedbacks.

7- Don’t always pick the cheapest company. Make sure you feel comfortable with your designer and trust them. You may also consider a small test project first, to see how they perform. For example, you may pay them a small fee and ask for some mock ups before you actually pick them.

8- Choosing local or non-local or offshore companies, may often be a choice that you need to make. We would definitely recommend going local vs. non-local, so you can have in person meetings and you are also in the same time zone and could get a hold of your designer during business hours. However, if you are a little technically savvy or have someone in staff that is a little technically savvy, then you may consider an offshore company that could get the same job done for much cheaper.

9- There are several sites that you could post a job and designers compete and bid on your project. For example: Elance and 99designs.com. For local companies search in search engines and use words such as “web design” plus your city name. You may also look in craigslist or post an ad in craigslist.

10- Keep in mind that a web design by itself will not bring you traffic unless you do some marketing. Search engine marketing or search engien optimization (SEO) is very important. Most web designers will tell you that they will include search engine optimization in the deal. However, keep in mind that a good SEO firm will often cost much more than the price you pay to design your website. For example, for a small website design you may pay $2000, but often you may find that a good SEO company will charge you at minimum $1000/month.So if your designer is telling you that they will include SEO, find out what exactly they will include and compare it to quotes from other SEO firms. We recommend that you keep your web design firm separate from your SEO firm. We also recommend Submit Express Search Engine Marketing Services. They are a company that we used for some of our websites and they have been in business for 1998, so they definitely know what they are doing.