Search Engine Optimization 101
What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO? Put simply, SEO is the art of organizing your content in such a way that it makes it easy for Google and other search engines to understand the pages of your site. For example if you have a site that reviews the latest in digital cameras, you would benefit greatly when someone types “digital camera” into Google your site would be listed on page 1.
Given that most people start the web searching experience on Google or other search engines, getting listed on the first page is incredibly valuable and like anything of value its incredibly competitive. First and foremost you should know that SEO is an art more than a science. Google does not provide much more than guidelines about how their search algorithms work and so anyone who promises they can get you on page 1 of Google is probably lying. You can certainly pay for ads on Google using their Adwords system but to be listed highly in the natural search results on Google requires patience, effort and some key know how. Obtaining high rank in Google can change your business but given that they can change their algorithm (and do) at any time and given you have no control over this, SEO should be part of a larger marketing plan. Don’t rely on it, even if you have good placement today.
Keyword Strategy
First and foremost in SEO is coming up with a strong keyword strategy. The trends in Internet searching are interesting as searches are getting longer and more complex. That is good news for web site owners as it opens up opporunities to get top placement for a wide variety of phrases that are significantly more targetted. What is your site about? What words and phrases will users type into Google to find the types of products and services you offer. Think of all the permutations. Ask your friends what they would search. There are some keyword tools provided by Google that show you trends in searches. Review competitive sites. Search these phrases on Google and see what comes up. This will give you a good idea on how competitive your keywords are. This list is key. Once you have your keywords and phrases, figure out how to work them gracefully into your pages. Do not try and trick Google. Search Engine SPAM is a sure way to get kicked out of the Google search. Keyword strategy is not about tricking the search engines it is about using words and phrases that users will search on and will get your site found.
Content Creation
One simple way to improve traffic from search engines is simply to create more relevant content. More content will ultimately drive more traffic as long as that content is relevant and optimized properly. Writing articles, sourcing content, adding product reviews will all help create a wealth of relevant content that will get indexed in the search engines. Another great way to add content is to have your users do it for you. This is often referred to as user generated content. User generataed content is one of the best weapons you can put in your arsenal. In fact, if you look at many of the most visited sites on the Internet you’ll notice that most have a huge amount of content and you may also notice that many of these sites rely on the content created by their user communities (E.g. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Craigslist, etc.).
Content Optimization
Content optimization is simply putting together a process to organize your pages so that the search engines can read the pages, understand their content and index them accordingly. Emphasize the phrases from your keyword list as part of this strategy so that the search phrases that are important to you are driving traffic to the appropriate pages on your site. There is a lot to optimizing content but some basics are use filenames that have your keywords in them (E.g. dog-walking.html rather than page2.html), title all of your pages, include text that is relevant, cross link your pages to one another, avoid images with text in them where possible and replace with text, create a site map of all the pages on your site. Look at the html on pages that are highly ranked. Watch what they are doing and do the same.
Link Strategies and Directory Submissions
While the keywords and content on your site determine which phrases will get your site found by searchers, it is the inbound links into your site that will determine where in the results your site will fall. Studies have shown that if you are not in the first 3 pages of search results (I.e. the top 30), your site will rarely get visited. The relevance and the quality of the inbound links to your site are critical in improving your search engine results. There are certain paid listings that can dramatically improve your search engine rankings but there are many blogs and sites that will have relevance to you and are already highly ranked that might be willing to swap links with you or even link to you simply because you add value to their site. In general the more high quality, highly ranked sites that link to your site, the higher your rank will be.
Measure everything
Use web analytics to view where your traffic is coming from. Google Analytics is free and a great resource but there are plenty of others. I check my Analytics almost every day to see how many people are visiting my sites and how they are finding my sites. That way I can always improve.