Search Engine Optimization and Analytics are important consideration when developing a website. SEO is optimizing a website to increase the visitor traffic by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page (SERP).

SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to search engines and improves the chances that the site will be found by search engines. A great and free resource for understanding SEO and analytics is Google business solutions.

Analytics is raw data that is collected from a website such as:

• How are visitors finding the site?
• How long are they staying on each page?
• What pages are getting the most traffic?
• What sites are linking to your website?
• What percent of conversions is the site getting from the traffic on the site?

So, how do you configure SEO and what do you do with the data that is gathered? These questions and more will be discussed and considered when our team starts to develop your business website. If your considering hiring a company to help with SEO and provide analytics then consider some information and warnings from google.

•  Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.

  Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

  "Dear google.com,
  I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

  Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

  Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

• Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.

  Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or "throwaway" domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to "help" you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.

• You should never have to link to an SEO.

  Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

• Be sure to understand where the money goes.

  While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they "control" other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn't work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you're considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.