Search Engine Optimization
(SEO)

Assessment - understanding your company: A successful SEO campaign starts with an understanding of you and your situation.  Every company has a different combination of products, competitors, customers, and internal resources.  At Bastion, we learn about your unique combination of assets and challenges and mold an effective Search Engine Optimization campaign around it.

Inititial Assessment
Meet | Analyze | Report | Propose

Strategy – setting the path: Based on what we learn from the Assessment, we map out a strategy. The focus may be on attracting a local, regional, national, or worldwide market.  It may be on a business-to-consumer market or a business-to-business market. In a tough competitive situation, it may make sense to attack the search engine opportunity head on – or it may make more sense to flank the competition. Finally, your internal resources and budget will dictate the scope of the campaign.

Bastion Internet helps you set your strategy to meet your specific target(s) and marketplace situation.

Equipping  - optimizing the website itself: With a clear strategy set, we use both time-tested and cutting edge tactics to make your site attractive to the search engines.  Crawlers and ‘bots are computer-driven programs that are sent out by their search engine masters to collect information on your site and take it back to the main computers for analysis and indexing that will ultimately be used to rank your website for specific search terms.

You may have heard of more technical terms like meta tags, attributes, keyword saturation, and more. These are all factors in ranking algorithms used by the search engines. These, together with the content on your pages and Google’s ability to access that content, make up what we in the industry refer to as on-page optimization.

Management and Maintenance – off-page tactics and ongoing optimization: The search engines are always changing.  Website elements that were valid last month may not be valid this month or may have been deemphasized by Google, Yahoo or MSN/Live.  Our search engine analysts are continually reviewing the industry to find out what’s in and what’s out.  We then incorporate that knowledge into your website for improved rankings. 

Additionally, a key element in today’s ranking algorithms is the number and quality of websites that link to your site (i.e. inbound links).  There are a variety of methods to build up the number of inbound links you have.  Building links varies in cost, ease, effectiveness, and necessity, and is usually best achieved over time (see more below).

Bastion Internet works with your company on an ongoing basis to build your rankings power and adjust to changing conditions.

Link Building – getting those inbound links: As mentioned above, when other websites link to your website, search engine rankings often go up. However, link building can be a labor-intensive effort.  We employ a number of techniques to build links for your web site as well as work with your employees to build links together.

The beauty of link-building is that when done correctly, you gain both a benefit from traffic being driven directly to your site from the link itself as well as from an improved Google or Yahoo ranking.

Timing – when to expect results: When you’ll effectively rank and start driving significant traffic to your site depends on a number of factors including where you’re starting from, the resources you’re willing to put into an SEO campaign, and how long your site has been in existence.  Often, we recommend putting complementary strategies in place (such as pay per click advertising), to start getting immediate, traffic-driving results while your SEO results build.