SEO FAQs

What Are Search Engines?

Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and MSN are examples of search engines used by surfers to search the Internet for information, products or services. Search engine companies use software programs called "spiders" or "web crawlers" to compile enormous lists of web sites and their content.

Complex algorithms determine the relative worth of each site (its rank) in order to return reliable results for searches that are relevant to the keywords used. Not all search engine companies use the same algorithms, and they constantly update their software for more accurate search results.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization is the process of designing a web site and writing the content in such a way that search engines can access and understand the content of the web site and index it in an appropriate manner.

If your web site is optimized correctly, it will be easier for people to find your site when they are looking for the products or services you offer.

SEO is an Ongoing Service

SEO is built into each Back2Front web site from the start. However, optimizing your web site when it is created is just the first step; SEO must be adjusted regularly as your site, your business, and your competition on the web change.

At Back2Front we can use our comprehensive statistics reporting engine, as well as your feedback on results, to maintain and improve your site's status over time. This SEO work can be done one piece at a time at your request, or as part of an Extended SEO program.

SEO Research

At Back2Front, we have done (and continue to do) the research and we know how search engines work. We avoid risky "black hat" SEO tricks, which may work for a short time but can actually hurt the site's ranking when discovered, because they break search engine rules and regulations. Instead, we only use legitimate "white hat" techniques that have been proven to work well over time and are approved by search engines.

Site Maps

Since Back2Front creates web sites that have no roadblocks to search engines, by default, the Google bot can index all pages of our sites without the need for site map submission. However, if you have a significant amount of content that is not "crawlable" (such as videos, PDFs or images), it may be beneficial to create and submit a site map of this content.

The Robots.txt File

For most sites, this file is not needed, as the default is to allow crawling by all search engine robots, which is what we want. In some rare instances where there is content on a site which the owner does not want to be indexed, we can add the correct robots.txt file and directives.

Social Networking

Using social networks to direct traffic to your site may be effective, depending on your business. The question is, "Is the time it takes to accomplish this worth the results?" If you are networking socially anyway, there's no reason why you can't add links to your web site whenever appropriate. If you are not, this technique may prove to be too time-consuming compared to other methods of gaining traffic.