Search Engine Optimization & Search Engine Marketing | Free SEO Advice
What is search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a methodical process to improve organic rankings in the search engines by making modifications and tweaks of a website targeting specific keywords, while practicing white hat SEO tactics, rules and guidelines that adhere to Google’s Webmaster Rules. A successful SEO campaign would include both on-page SEO and off-page SEO (link building).
Making such modifications to your website can vastly improve “natural” or “organic” rankings, allowing a website to obtain high positioning in search engine rankings, which in turn improves the quality and volume of traffic to the website. The more visible, the more clicks your website is going to get, the stronger chances you have to convert those clicks into sales…another words, generating a profitable ROI.
Ok, so here goes my SEO 101 or SEO for Dummies.
What’s on-page SEO? On-page SEO begins with doing keyword research. Keyword research is using various tools to see what “real” people are searching for. What keywords is your audience using to find your business? It’s also acquiring that information then researching who and what you’re competing against in the way of search results. Finding keywords that have great metrics (good average search volume and low competition) is going to make it easier for you to rank for that keyword. Once keyword research is complete, you will then need to group or categorize these keywords by page. Assign the relevant keywords to each page on your website, never duplicating a keyword from page to page. You must keep a clear focus so the search engines aren’t confused as to which page you’re trying to rank for which keyword. You want to avoid any keyword blurring. Make sense? Moving on…
Once you’ve assigned or grouped those keywords by page you can then create the Meta tags. These are what’s called your Meta title, Meta description, and Meta keywords in your source code. You might want to leave the implementation up to your webmaster or web designers if you’re not familiar with coding. For the “dummies”, here’s how I can explain to you what a Meta title and Meta description is. A Meta description is the wording you are seeing at the very top of this screen you’re on right now. Look up up up….all the way at the very top of your screen. Are you seeing it? It should say Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Now, a Meta description is a description you’d see in the search results. It displays just under the Meta title. It tells searchers what that site is about or that page is about. Got it? Good.
Now, other than creating the Meta tags you’re also going to need keyword rich content. Recommended is about 300-500 words per page. You can check this count by using a free word counter tool online. I have a lot of clients who complain about putting all of this content on their pages. I hear it all the time….”but my competitors don’t have all of this content on their pages”. Yet, I prove them wrong time and time again. Now it may not necessarily be 300-500 words per page, but if they’re landing on page 1 of Google, I guarantee they have good keyword rich content on their pages. If you have images or flash, (by the way, NOT recommended…it’s only for looks and if it takes too long to load, well you may just lose potential customers or visitors to your site. Nobody wants to wait for the page to load.) you can certainly put the content underneath the images, so long as it is there. Ok, so you don’t want to “overstuff” the page full of keywords. Repeating the keywords over and over again does NOT make your page any stronger. In fact, this can harm your site just as much as not having any applicable content. There are keyword density tools available free online for you to use. The keyword density tool I’ve just recommended is one I use frequently. It’s easy to use and you can analyze an entire website or copy/paste content into a box to be analyzed. Your keyword density should be right around 3%. Also, keep in mind that your content MUST be visible to your visitors. Another words, you can’t have it on the page but in such small font or such light colored font that it appears that it’s not really meant for your visitors. Those sneaky search engine spiders are smart enough to detect that. Your content also needs to be above your copyright, ok.
Lastly, on-page SEO also includes good internal linking. From your home page, create internal links. These are links that point visitors and search engines to your internal pages. For example, let’s say you have a GPS tracking website and you have an internal page of your website that talks about “teen tracking”. From your home page, mention teen tracking and make it a link. The link will be the URL of the “teen tracking” page. Make several of those internal links on your home page. Oh, one more important thing you should know. Search engine spiders can not read anything embedded in an image. So let’s say you have an image of a GPS tracking device and within the image it says “gps tracking device”. Well that keyword and that content isn’t going to count or help you. What you may want to do is make an ALT tag for that image that says “GPS tracking device”. Search engine spiders CAN read ALT tags.
Ok, moving on to Off-Page SEO.
What is Off-page SEO? Off-page SEO is your link building strategy or link building campaign. Obtaining backlinks (links from other sites that point back to your own site) is a very important and crucial role in SEO. Having a strong link portfolio will show the search engines that you’re linking to reputable websites. A good link is a link that comes from another website that maybe that site ranks well for their own search terms or keywords in the organic results. A good link may also come from a well trusted website that has a high page rank. (You can check your page rank here or you can install Google’s toolbar and see Page Rank all the time.) Page rank is Google’s measuring tool that so to say, rates a website. Sort of like a credit score. It tells you how reputable a page is in Google’s eyes. It’s relevant, the site is completely relevant to what it claims it’s about, measuring the importance of the webpage, and based on the number and quality of the inbound links the site has. The best way to obtain a backlink is to either reciprocate a trade of a link from your site to the other site’s. However, if you are going to trade links, you should obtain a link from a site that is within your industry or verticle market. This is a good quality link. For example, if you sell GPS tracking devices, you don’t want to go get a link from nanascookies.com. Now, there are exceptions. Other good links to obtain are links from a site or business maybe that is in your geographical location. So you’re located in Arizona and so is Nanas Cookies. They have a decent page rank and perhaps they also rank well for their own keywords, so ask to trade a link. Also another great link to obtain is from a site that is as old as the internet. Find a site that is maybe considered “grandfathered” in by Google. This would be a site that has been up and active online for more than just a few years. Another example, let’s say you find out that a website has been live online since 1998 and has good page rank. This type of site is the kind of site you can also acquire a link from.
So now you ask, how do you obtain a link or two, or three, etc. Compile a nice professional link request letter and send it to the websites you’re trying to proposition for a link. Check out their “contact us” page or look for the webmaster contact info. within a site. What should you include in your proposal letter? I’ve got an example here. I won’t lie to you, it’s very time consuming and you’ll probably have to send out 10 requests to get just 1 response. Other ways to get links. Do your friends have blogs? Do your friends or family members have websites? Ask them for a link. Visit and participate in forums relevant to your industry. Some forums have “dofollow” tags, allowing a link back to your website. Also try submitting an article into article directories. If someone picks up your article and distributes it to their site, you can possibly get a link that way. Check out paid directories online. Search for “Paid Directories”. My favorite resource is this one. It shows you paid directories by Page Rank. This list will show the URL, name of the directory, and it’s cost. Remember, it is going to take time to obtain a links and build up your link portfolio. It may get frustrating at times but you have to stay on top of it.
Now that you’ve made it, hopefully you’ve read this plethora of information and you’ve learned something along the way, get started on your search engine optimization. And, continue to check back for other articles and postings of how you can continue your SEO. Good luck in achieving your goals!
“Now that’s SEXY!”