Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization (SEO)’

Most people think of websites as “passive marketing”.  Websites are passive marketing tools because customers have to come to the website on their own.  Websites do not find new customers, the serve customers that find you.  That’s not a completely true statement, but it is mostly true.
Passive Marketing
Passive marketing methods are dependent on people finding your website.  If we use that term liberally, then we can say that passive marking would include common search engine optimization (SEO), link exchanges, listings in link directories, word-of-mouth, business cards, etc.
Passive marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization, are very important.  I encourage you to use all those techniques. In this article, we are going to build on the concept with more aggressive “Active Marketing” techniques. Read the rest of this entry »

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most discussed methods for improving traffic to your website.  Search engines, such as Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, and others are all trying to help web surfers find what they are looking for.  This is harder than it sounds.  Search engine companies are always working on their advanced algorithms in order to produce better results for web surfers.  It is a very competitive industry.  SEO experts work very hard to keep up with the changes in the search engine industry.

I strongly recommend you use a professional SEO consultant for all of this.  It is a lot of work and there are special tools that make all this much easier.  You can do it yourself, but is it worth your time?  Only you can say.

Know your baseline – Make sure you have statistics enabled on your site.  I recommend Google Analytics.

Know your objectives – Are you selling something?  Looking for phone calls?  Or do you want people to sign-up for your newsletter.

Keyword Analysis – Keyword research tells you what keywords you should target in your SEO strategy.  These should be consistent with your objectives.  I recommend Word Tracker

Competitor Analysis – Search the major search engines using the keywords from your analysis.  Learn who your competitors are.  You will want to out-perform them with better keyword densities, more inbound links, etc.  I recommend Web CEO.

On-Page SEO – There are a number of on-page things to do.  Here are the most significant areas to optimize:

• Pages should have keywords in the filename. These keywords appear in the address bar.
• The page TITLE should have keywords. These keywords appear on top of the browser.
• META Tags (keywords and description) should have lots of keywords in them as well.
• All graphics should have ALT tags with keywords in them as well.
• Page content should include heading tags and emphasis tags to draw attention to key words and phrases on the page.
• Page content should have a high density of critical keywords.
• All links on your site to other pages on your site should have keywords in those links. Avoid using [click here]. Use keywords in the link.
• Create additional site content if necessary. Make sure you have all your keywords optimized somewhere on your site.
• Update your site regularly. The more updates the better. This is why blogs are so popular.

Off-Page SEO – There are many off-page SEO techniques.  We can only cover a few here:

• Write keyword-rich articles and submit them to free article sites. Write a lot of articles. Use an article submission service to get your articles out to more websites faster.
• Write comments on blogs and social networks and include links back to your site. Make sure your links always include keywords.
• Post ads on craigslist.org, ebay.com, and anywhere else you can place ads promoting your products or services.

Your ultimate goal is to have as many pages on your site as possible and for those pages to be keyword optimized.  Then you want as many links to your site from other sites and those links should have keywords in the clickable part as well.   This is a never-ending process.  Always add more content.  Always produce more inbound links.  It is a lot of work but it can pay off big.

It can take a while for your SEO efforts to be fruitful.  Just keep at it.  Watch your website work its way up the rankings.  You will thank me when you are #1.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is actually more complicated than most people realize. After all, not every business needs results from the search engines. Some businesses only need local results. Then there are businesses that rely on search engines for 100% of their revenue.

Once you figure out what your basic needs are, then you have to determine who your real online competition is. In traditional terms, your competition is the business down the street. On the Internet, however, your competition is the website that is beating you out on your keywords. Your competition might not even sell the same products or services as you. If he is getting your search engine traffic, he is the competition.

Know Your Keywords

Your keywords are your “turf” on the Internet. Your success depends on two things. First, what are the keywords that represent your products or services? You should be able to figure that out on your own. Secondly, what are the keywords your clients are searching for when they want the products or services you offer?

Let’s say that you sell cars. If you sell Chevrolet vehicles, you can easily guess a few keywords. It is not a surprise that “Chevrolet dealership” is a key phrase. Since your prospective customers are generally searching within one city, you do not have to beat out the whole world for “Chevrolet Dealership”. You must have to beat out the local competitors. Phrases such as “Chevrolet Dealership Houston” or “Houston Chevrolet Dealership”, will be easier to target and will produce your best results.

Know the Competition

Search Google.com, Yahoo.com, msn.com, and see who comes up in the top five results for your most important keywords. It does not matter if those sites sell cars. You want to be on top for your phrase so whatever comes up … that is your competition.

Beat Them at Their Own Game

Analyze those sites for the most common SEO tactics. Then whatever they are doing, you should one-up them in every respect.

Here are a few tips on what to look for:

Keyword frequency – How many times do they use the words you are targeting? Count them. Use those words and phrases more frequently and more times.

Inbound links – How many links do they have coming in? Search google.com using this format: link:www.anythinginternet.com

Prominent Keywords – Bolded keywords, keywords in the website address, keywords in the title bar, and keywords in headings are all considered important.

There are many other things to look for. I recommend you hire a professional SEO consultant if search engine results are important to you. These tips will help you optimize a few of the most obvious parts of your web page. There are a lot more things to do. You want your keywords in your page title, your META tags, and you want to optimize every page on your website.

Increasing the number of inbound links can be a lot of work. If your competition has a lot of these, you should hire a professional to help you compete. Experts can add hundreds of new inbound links for you quite easily.

If you make changes to your website, prepare to wait a long time for those changes to be 100% effective. Some things could take six months to become fully effective.