What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
- Website can be edited or "optimized" to be more visible by Search engines like Google and Yahoo.
- SEO involves making strategic changes to both the code and content (Website copy or text) of your Website.
Top 3 reasons why your Website needs search engine optimization:
- SEO is necessary if you want your Website to appear on search engine results.
- SEO is currently the most effective internet marketing tool for 2009.
- Search engines view Websites differently than people. If your site has mostly images and multimedia content - and very little text - your Website will look like a blank page to search engines.
5 Steps of SEO
- Get a snapshot of your current Website statistics.
- Who is visiting your site? How did they get there? What are they doing there? Getting initial Web statistics is important so you can measure the results of your search engine optimization efforts.
- Many web site hosting providers have a tool for viewing basic statistics. You can also get your site setup to a use a free, more powerful web statistics tool called Google Analytics.
- Do keyword research.
- This is the "strategic" part. A keyword is one or more words that someone would type into a search engine. Each page of your site should be written with a primary keyword as the main topic. Start with your home page and then do keyword research for the other most important pages on your site.
- Think like a web site visitor - what would they type in a Google search box to find your primary product or service? Come up with a short list of keywords. Make sure the keywords are highly relevant to your web page content.
- Test out keyword performance with a free online keyword tool such as Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. The secret is to choose a keyword that is popular but doesn’t have too much competition from other Websites (Websites that are using that same keyword).
- Integrate keywords into your Website.
- Keywords need to be weaved into both the HTML code and the written content of your site. There are specific strategies involved in both areas – so do some research on your own or hire an experienced Website and SEO copywriter like Mediatrunk.com.
- We will edit your existing Website content and code for search engine visibility, and we will also give you key guidelines on how to write effect search engine optimized content for any future press releases, event notices, and blog articles that you may write.
- Write specific content for each web page, and update your site often.
- Be sure to create a separate page for each of your main products or services. Search engines will rank a page higher if it focuses on just one topic or specific keyword.
- Update your Website often. Search engines tend to overlook a site that hasn’t been updated in a while – making it much less visible on search results. If you don’t know what to update your site with, consider adding photos, blog articles, news articles, event notices, and press releases at least monthly.
- Submit your Website to search engines and local directories.
- Submit your Website to the Open Directory Project, and your site will be listed on Google, MSN, and many other popular search engines – not including Yahoo. Also, consider paying for at least one year ($299) for a Yahoo Directory listing. Good news for non-profits – you can submit your site to Yahoo for free!
- Submit your Website to free local listing Websites like Google Maps and Yahoo! Local – this is especially effective if your physical business address is in the same city as your customer base. Then if someone searches for "your product" + "your location", the local listing results will appear above the regular search engine results.
Keep doing SEO to maintain or improve your search engine results.
- After about 2-3 months, repeat step 1 (Web stats) to measure your results. You should be getting more visits to your Website from search engines. What keywords are visitors using to get to your site? What pages are they visiting? Once a month look up and record your web stats and analyze them.
- Keep your site updated frequently with content that is optimized for search engines.
- Periodically do more keyword research and adjust primary keywords for each page if you find something more relevant, popular, and non-competitive.
- Make sure you’re listed in the search engines, local directories, and other Websites that you submitted your site to. Find more of those sites on a regular basis, and submit your site to them.
SEO can be time-consuming but rewarding. You can do it yourself or hire some or all of it out to a web designer who specializes in search engine optimization.
Good luck with SEO and have fun seeing more traffic coming to your Website!