Whoa, hang on a sec. That's not exactly a yes or no kind of question there. Let me start by actually asking you something. Do you have a lot of content?

No. We've written the content that will appear on our site, but we've kept it to a minimum so that readers won't get bored reading a vast amount of text. That's perfect, right?

Nope. Search engines love content. "Relevant" content. Let's say for example that you're wanting to create a site for a company that makes pencils. You've got five pages with very little text. It looks nice and clean, but there's hardly any actual content there. As far as search engines are concerned, your site really isn't that important. You're not going to rank very high at all.

You may not necessarily require "tons of pages". You can still have a relatively small page count, but you're definitely going to want to have tons of content in order to rank fairly well. You also have to keep in mind how much content your competitors have on their site(s).

Absolutely not. You have to remember that there is no standardized resolution from one monitor to the next. One person might be running their display at 1024 x 768 while another person runs at 1600 x 1200. You never know. Plus, each browser on each platform has different sized buttons, address bars, borders, etc. There is no possible way to create a site that fits perfectly on every monitor. Scrolling is NOT bad usability, it is a function of the browser. Just as hitting the back button is a function of the browser, or typing in a URL is a function of the browser.

So all monitors aren't the same?

No. Again, you never know what anyone's monitor will be set at. Also keep in mind that the colors you see on your screen will vary from what we see on our color calibrated screens.

Are you saying that the PMS swatches used for our company colors might not show up correctly on our Web site?

They'll show up correctly for us since our monitors are professionally color calibrated. But we cannot guarantee that every person viewing your site either has the technical expertise to color calibrate their monitor or pay someone to calibrate it. Anyway, we're getting off topic a bit.

Let's keep using the pencil company as our example, if you have tons of content but that content only mentions pencils two or three times then your content is wasted. The key here (and this is something you may not like) is to have lots of redundant words pop up again and again throughout your content. Mention pencils as many times as you possibly can, mention all the different types of pencils you make. How the process of making pencils works and why your customers need to buy pencils from you.

You just said the magic words: "key words". Search engines will index the site and go "ooooo, wow! Look at this, they say 'pencils' here and here they say 'pencils' again, and then again here and again here..."

Search engines love "relevant" content. Relevant content that pertains to your company. The more relevant content you have on your site regarding your industry, the more important you'll appear to search engines.

Great! So if I write lots of as you say "relevant content" then I'll show up in the number one spot in search engines, right?

Not exactly. It's going to take time to even get on the first page. Plus every industry is a bit different. Let's say we create a new Web site for your pencil company. ...let's say your company is fairly small or medium sized, and you're trying to go up against "Mega Pencil Corporation" who's currently in the #1 spot if you do a search for pencil manufacturers.

You're more than likely not going to beat them out of that spot. Take a look at the top ranking sites of your competitors, notice that more than likely they have a ton of "relevant" content. But the other thing to keep in mind is if they've been towards the top spot on search engines for a long time, it's going to be even harder to knock them out.

So you can't guarantee that our new Web site will be on the first page of search engines

No, we can't guarantee that. We will design a site which will use advanced search engine optimization techniques that will allow your site to easily be indexed by all search engines. Coupled with your "relevant" content, over time your search engine rankings will improve. Depending upon your industry, who your competition is and how well their site is optimized for search engines, you may very well quickly advance to the first page in searches for the key words you're targeting... or it may take a few months to begin advancing upwards.

They certainly can. Ad Words are pay-per-click ads which will appear at the very top of search engine listings (typically in blue boxes). Prices per click vary greatly, anywhere from 1¢ to $100 PER CLICK. It all depends on the industry you're in and what your competition is paying per click.

Our focus at Studio4squared is to optimize your site (again, using relevant content you provide to us) so that search engines will easily index your site and over time improve your rankings. You can certainly pay for Ad Words if you want, it can definitely be a great boost if you don't have the patience to wait for your rankings to naturally improve.

Pay-per-click huh. Hmmm, I might skip that for now. So how long could it take for my search engines rankings to improve without Ad Words

Search engines currently index our own site about two to three times a month. It took a couple months for our site's rankings to advance up the ladder. But that's just us, it might take your new site a couple weeks, or a few more months than ours. Search engines are fairly secretive when it comes to exactly how they rank your site and what their timetables are for doing so, etc... you just have to be patient.

The average Web designer (with some coding savvy) can tear apart our own site and see what we've done, but there are other techniques we've used which are not readily apparent. However, we're not going to simply list out these design methodologies for everyone to read as I'm sure you can understand why. It's one thing to be able to design and code a Web site, but it's a whole different ball game to be able to design and code a Web site that is search engine friendly.

Also be sure to watch out for designers suggesting the use of meta tags as they are an outdated form of SEO (search engines will completely ignore meta tags).

If you'd like to set up a meeting with us, we can go over with you in person a few of our design methodologies that we'll implement into your new Web site just so you can have a basic understanding of what we can do for you to help improve your rankings. To go over every aspect would take several hours though.

One of our Web designers has been working for about two years on search engine optimization almost exclusively, so if you ask for something which will not work well in search engines, we will be sure to tell you right up front. With static sites, it was an art form by itself just to create a site using the SEO techniques. But now with NEATO, our content management solution, we've made it very easy for you to keep your site optimized for search engines. Click here to learn more about NEATO.

We've got the experience and know-how to help your search engine rankings improve, it's up to you to provide us with lots of relevant content though (we won't write it for you as you know your business better than we do).

That is a question that has to be answered on a case by case basis. Your current Web site may not jive with search engines at all (especially if it uses frames which we always recommend against), and to help it out might take more work than simply creating an all new site!

If you're interested in Studio4Squared optimizing your current site set up a meeting with us so we can look at your site to give you a better answer, and to also answer any additional questions you might have regarding search engine optimization.