The simple answer is that the search engines attempt to list the results starting with the most authoritative, relevant websites for the search query. However, this is an extraordinarily complex algorithm, taking into account hundreds of variables on millions of webpages and returning the results in fractions of a second. The algorithms take into consideration the content on the page, the depth of content on the domain, the meta-tags and titles, the age of the site, the number and nature of in-bound links, the frequency of updates to the site, and dozens of other factors. As a result, Search Engine Optimization is a complex undertaking, one that requires a diverse set of skills and a deep understanding of the main factors involved in the ranking process.

For the most part, the major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and Bing use similar criteria for ranking sites, and you will see many similar search results comparing across the different search engines. However, there are differences, and these differences will affect the SEO process. For example, Google is generally the slowest to reflect changes in rankings resulting from successful SEO efforts, and Bing is the fastest, so clients will generally see improvements in results starting in Bing, then Yahoo and finally Google. The good news is that a well-executed SEO campaign will yield positive results across all search engines, even though the timing may vary to see those improvements.

Flash technology has helped to make websites engaging and interactive and the use of flash elements has no negative effect on your rankings. However, since the search engines cannot read the content present in flash files as easily as they can plain text, a site with significant flash content (or an all-flash site) will pose a major barrier to getting properly indexed by the search engines. In addition to providing what we believe to be a sub-par user experience, sites based heavily in flash do not possess many of the navigational elements that web users are accustomed to in a site. If you have a website with major pieces of content locked into flash, Wpromote can help you create a plan to migrate this flash content to a non-flash format, but one that maintains flash's positive aesthetic and attention-grabbing elements.

There is nothing inherently wrong from an SEO perspective of having a dynamically driven website. The key is care must be taken to make the URL structure, meta-tags and content as search engine "friendly" as possible, so that individual pages (for example, a product name, description, SKU and price on an ecommerce site) can be easily indexed by the search engines. Wpromote can help reprogram your dynamically created pages to have a much friendlier appearance to both search engines and users, a component addressed in all successful SEO campaigns.

Tactics that can get a website penalized or even banned from the search engines are ones used specifically to try to coax higher rankings. Over the years, these techniques have included masking text, cloaking pages, stuffing meta-tags and creating link farms to artificially increase a site's inbound links, just to name a few. Wpromote, and no upstanding search engine marketing firm, employs any of these "black hat" tactics. Our methodology is firmly grounded in the best practices and guidelines set forth by the search engines. You should be wary of any SEO firm whose results seem too good to be true.

Wpromote approaches each SEO campaign with a two-fold attack. First, we seek to remove any barrier to the search engines' analysis of your primary keywords. This may include remedying bad internal linking structure, removing content from flash or images, customizing meta-tags, improving URL structure, among other factors. After these barriers have been removed, we increase your site's relevance in the eyes of the search engines by adding significant amounts of content to your site, establishing high quality in-bound links, implementing blogs and social bookmarking, writing and distributing press releases and much more. Exactly which components are used will depend on the needs of your specific SEO campaign, your budget and your goals.

While our clients achieve superb results with our SEO services, it is impossible to make any blanket guarantee as to specific ranking results within a specific time-frame. Indeed, we would advise anyone to be wary of any company that make guarantees; it is not a practice used by ethical SEO firms.

Some SEO firms surprise their clients by performing SEO in the form of sending to them long lists of changes that the client needs to make to their website to become more search engine friendly. This is not the way that Wpromote operates. We perform the work ourselves, or work directly with your webmaster or web designer if preferred.

Wpromote has vast internal capabilities, with teams of designers, programmers and link builders that perform all of our clients' work in-house. If we require specific capabilities, such as lining up a professional blogger or an industry-specific expert copywriter, we tap into a professional network to utilize such resources. However, we only do so when it will be of extra benefit to our client.