Many clients ask me about how to improve their search engine ranking. There is a certain mystique about search engine optimization (SEO) among business owners. The purpose of this article is to demystify search engine optimization and lay down a simple framework for businesses to target their SEO efforts.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website for targeted keywords (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization). The idea is that the earlier that a site is listed in search results, the more potential customers will visit the site. Studies have shown that around 60% of users click on search engine results and not the paid ads on top and side. These clicks are called organic clicks (as opposed to pay-per-click or PPC) and do not cost you anything. Since the majority of visitors find sites through search engine listings, creating an effective SEO strategy is essential.
Please feel free to comment below to add your two cents or correct any inaccurate information.
1. Choose your core focus market and select keywords
The first step is to decide what type of visitors your would like to visit your site and what keywords visitors from your industry are using in the major search engines. By solidifying effective search terms that will drive users to your site, you are now prepared to integrate these keywords into your site and blog posts (see below). Spend time deciding what keywords are used by people most who are looking for products or services that you offer and be sure that these keywords appear within the first few lines of your site.
2. Post on blogs and forums
This probably the most underused and overused method to improve your search ranking. The key here is to answer questions and offer expertise to users on other website owners already established websites. For example if you are a mobile phone store, then you could answer questions users have about a phones features on a Motorola forum. By including a link back to your site, along with industry relevant keywords, your website’s ranking will rapidly increase. Forums allow you to build relationships in your niche industry and help build credibility and trust with potential customers. Furthermore, forums allow you to display your website link in the body of each post. Once the website hosting the forum is indexed by a search engine, there will be a noticeable effect on the ranking of your site. A free blog can be created with Wordpress.
3. Build Your Site in CSS
This article isn’t meant to be too technical, but simply put, ask your web designer if your website was built in tables or CSS. If he/she says “tables”, it is time to find a new designer. Many web designers still use tables to build websites. This technique has been completely abandoned by the expert design community and is frowned upon by search engines.
4. Create and publish your own content
Having a blog on your site will provide a steady stream of fresh content that incorporates your keywords. A simple blog like this one can be set up with Wordpress.
5. List your business on Google Maps
This tool is free and better than Yellow Pages. Your site ranking will not only improve just by being listed, but users will be provided with a map directly to your organization, basic contact information, and even hours of operation. Customers will thank you for not burying the store phone number deep within your site.
6. Provide Useful Information
Search engines look kindly on providing visitors with rich, useful content. Don’t spam potential users. Educate users rather than up sell them. Here are some examples of this logic applied- Pet care tips for a Vet office or pet supply store
- Valentine’s day date ideas for chocolate shop or florist
- Free excel finance calculators on website for real estate agent
7. Write press releases
Press Releases are an effective method of putting your brand in the public eye. When the press release is distributed on major news networks, your brand will be associated with large scale media that receives millions of viewers and readers. Links from press releases will get read and shared, depending on its newsworthiness.
Releasing a new product?
... Write a press release.
Signed a new partnership?
... Announce it with a press release.
Hire a new CEO?
... Write a press release.
Populate the press release with relevant links back to your website. While hiring a professional to write a press release may sound expensive, online services like Brander are disrupting the public relations space with highly effective and affordable press release writing and distribution services.
8. Submit your site to the search engines yourself.
Do not pay for any service that offers to re-submit your site to search engines. They could get you permanently blacklisted from the search engine. Then it’s back to the drawing board. The major search engines are Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Bing.
Google - http://www.google.com/addurl/
Yahoo - http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
Microsoft Bing - http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url
9. Improve your Metadata
While search engines have admittedly reduced the importance they place on your meta tags, there is still great value to be had from optimizing all of your meta tags. For the title attribute, use a descriptive title that does more than state the page and your company name. For instance, on your about or company page, rather than have a title that looks like this "About | Eyemagine", a more useful title would be something like "Eyemagine is an Orange County based web development agency". Now, not only is the page title actually describing what content is on the page, but it contains relevant keywords that you want to target. Similarly, try tailoring your meta description to the page itself, rather than using the same description sitewide. For usage info, refer to the w3c page on meta tags: W3C Schools. One important thing to note, search engines have all but completely phased out the keyword meta data from their algorithms due to the abusive keyword usage by webmasters in the past. While many recommend ignoring them completely, I still create keyword lists (no more than 15-20 keywords.
