First off, let’s state the obvious.

We put so much time and energy into developing and maintaining this site for several reasons.

One of those is to funnel in traffic so we can build a loyal audience as well as sell services to those who need them.

But how exactly do we do that? And what’s the point of writing so much about ReverbNation?

SEO and Keyword Research

In case you haven’t realized it by now, we do a lot of research.

One type of research we involve ourselves in is Keywords for the purpose of SEO (search engine optimization).

Google, Yahoo!, and Bing are the 3 major search engines we focus on, but as you may have noticed, there are a large number of search engines archiving and organizing the Internet.

95% of people who have hired us to build their website, also hired us to “get on the front page of Google”.

It’s one thing to build a website.  It’s a completely different thing to build a website that is optimized for search engines.

Example

The guys over at Middle Tennessee Solar and Skylights provide us with an outstanding example.

When we started developing their site a few years ago, one of our main goals was to rank #1 for the phrase “nashville skylights” (as well as several others but let’s keep it simple).

One of our biggest challenges was hurdling over the company Nashville Skylights (which no longer exists…whew).  Since their site was Search Engine Optimized and they were using Google AdWords service, they had established themselves as the #1 site for our target keyword phrase.

Even after they closed their doors and left Nashville, we still had to deal with ranking above their website because their site was never taken down.

We also faced the challenge of proving to Google our site should be listed above all the major directory listing sites for businesses in the solar energy industry.  Not easy.

It took us months of rearranging the wording of content, altering page titles and meta tags, adding extra HTML coding to links and images, as well other tricks we had up our sleeves.

With a little patience and perseverance Middle Tennessee Solar & Skylights not only ranks at the top for “nashville skylights” but also for phrases such as “skylights in tennessee”, “velux tennessee”, and a few others.

The lesson to take away from this is that SEO is not an overnight success story; but it is a living, breathing, organic process that must be nurtured and maintained over time.