At US Website Design, we do not focus on schemes to “shoot your website to the top of the search engines”. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a method; a discipline. It's a tried and true collection of efforts that all combined increase your exposure to potential customers. As such, it's also time consuming and requires a degree of patience. It is not a guarantee of first place position on any particular search engine.

The single biggest component of SEO that creates delay is the time it takes for the search engines to read sites, and the time it takes for those sites to appear in their index. This can take from two to six weeks depending on where you enter the cycle.

At any given time, there are any number of companies selling services that promise to elevate your search ranking overnight. While it can’t be denied that some of these services may work, it is questionable for how long. It is not inconceivable that some of these methods can be summarily excluded from the search engine algorithm without notice or warning. This is why we suggest a solid foundation of search engine optimization based on proven methodology first, before adding in more creative methods to increase rank status.

SEO is not rocket science – the mystique of the IT guy.

For years and years, Information Technology professionals have hidden the methods behind what they do behind an air of secrecy and non-committal communication. This created a sense of myth and a mystique around IT that is not really true. To be sure, there is a lot of education and effort involved in IT, but there is also a lot of information that could be disseminated that isn’t, for fear of increasing competition and eliminating that image of godlike power and knowledge.

The same holds true for SEO. There is an entire industry that has sprung up over the last 10 years around Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Friendly URLs and many more terms that don’t all mean the same thing but are all part of one single methodology. If you do a search on Google at any given time, you’ll find any number of companies who offer to put you at the top of the search engines in as little as 15 minutes up to as much as $1,700 a month. It is our belief that if these methods do not adhere to basic SEO methods, you may actually be on top for a minute or two, but ultimately what goes up must come down (think Skylab).