SEO: should you pay or grasp it yourself?

There occur lots of new resources in Internet everyday. These new resources compete with your web site. Less and less users visit your web site and decide that your web site needs optimization. How much does search engine optimization cost? Should you turn to professionals or should you accomplish optimization yourself?

SEO stands for search engine optimization, i.e. site optimization for search engines. Search engine optimization or search optimization is optimization of HTML-code, site structure, i.e. all additional work made to raise site’s release in search engines.

We believe that you should answer the question "Should I pay or do it myself?" beforehand. If you are going to accomplish site optimization yourself, you need to choose Content Managment System (CMS) having a range of facilities without which you will not be able to accomplish optimization yourself. For example, such facilities as: - forming TITLE of every page; - forming Meta-Tag on every page;
- forming Description of every page will let you respond to changes of your site rating and web site content.

So, you have defined your web site aims, formed key-words list, developed your site navigation structure, chosen CMS (or CMS was developed for you). At the same time you have been developing content for your web site.

I. Filling your web site with content

1. Semantic marking of the content
It is necessary to use proper HTML-elements in required places. Use tags <h1>heading</h1> for headings, <p></p> for paragraphs.

CMS: This facility should be presented in WYSIWYG-editor in the form of a possibility to put a heading for a text. For example:

2. Use of graphics
We do not recommend: Using flash, java-scripts in navigation menu:

First line: navigation structure is graphic variant. Second line: navigation menu is text variant.

Advantage of text navigation is that all section titles will be indexed by search engine robots.

We recommend: If you provide text with photos, pictures, start description of them with tag. It is desirable to include the keywords you have chosen into the description.

CMS: this facility should be presented in WYSIWYG-editor: when adding a picture you can fill in "Image description, Title" fields.

3. Site navigation structure
Every page should have obligatory attributes: Title, Description, Meta-tag. All these obligatory attributes should include the keywords.

CMS: facility to specify TITLE, DESCRIPTION, META-TAG for every section of the web site, for example:

4. Site map
Site map is very useful for content indexing by search engines.

CMS: site map should be automatically generated and displayed in "Site map" section.

5. Content and frequency of web site updating
Frequency of web site updating, number of pages to be updated should be regular. Make it your rule to upload news and information materials every week.

CMS: should let you create and edit sections yourself.

II. Work with external factors

1. Outgoing and incoming links
The more links to your site exist in Internet, the better. Create description of your site and register your web site in catalogs. But you should take relevance into account: it is desirable (especially for Google) that links to your web site should be put at the sites with similar subject-matter. This influences PR (PageRank) of the site: the higher PR is, the higher your web site is in the list search results. Do not forget to register your web site in Yahoo, MSN, Google (DMOZ) catalogs.

2. Site use statistics
Analyze site statistics. We recommend using free system Google Web Analytics.

III. The cost of SEO

We believe that before ordering SEO-optimization you need to try doing some part of the job you can do without turning to professional help. SEO-optimization should be accomplished by marketing managers. Internet became one of the media-spheres and marketing managers must know about services and products promotion both in the off-line market and in Internet.

If you decided to turn to some company to order SEO-optimization, we would like to offer the list of works to be done:
SEO consultation
Key-phrase research (Word Tracker)
Number of key-phrased optimized
One way links (Increase PR)
Copywriting
Meta tags (Title, keyword, desc)
Creation of robots.txt file
Creation of Google sitemap.xml
PPC landing pages
Link building/link procurement
DMOZ submission
Yahoo directory submission
Real-time web site statistics
Setup of web site sitemap
Alternate text added to images

The cost of SEO-optimization varies from 1 500 $  to 10 000 $ per month; terms of result achieving vary from 1 month to 1 year. But due to Internet changeability only some companies can guarantee success.