SEO - Search Engine Optimisation Strategies

How to Obtain Higher Site Ranking on the Search Engines

I'm going to make a few assumptions here, and they are:

• you're a small business owner
• your existing website is not performing well in the search engines, or you're about to build a new site and want to get it right
• you don't want to become a search engine guru, just learn the basics (you have a business to run after all)

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one the most hotly debated topics online. SEO experts abound. Many e-books and guides have been written and online forums and blogs buzz with debates on what works and what doesn't.

But SEO is not what this site is all about. The aim of this site is to simply help small business owners create a website which will perform well in the natural search results and turn a profit. The info on this page is the end result of what I have learnt, applied and achieved positive results with. Simple.

Natural search engine traffic is the best type of traffic there is. Sure, if you've got a hefty advertising budget you can drive traffic to your site with TV, radio, print, pay-per-click and other online & offline advertising.

All of that has its place. But, if you're a typical small business owner with limited resources you will need the free, targeted traffic that organic (non-sponsored) search engine results deliver.

The Basics

The world of Search Engine Optimisation is complex and can be confusing. The methodology used to index and rank your site is constantly changing and evolving. So, how do you create a small business website that achieves top site ranking on the search engines? Despite the complexities, there are a few basic, never-changing rules to follow:

Target the Right Keywords

Keywords are the words or phrases that your potential customer will enter into a search box to find information relating to your product or service. Before writing any text for your site you should make a list of your most important keywords.

Then, go to Wordtracker's Free Keyword Research Tool and enter your words. The results you get will indicate how many times those words were searched for at Wordtracker in the last 90 days. You will also get a list of search terms which include your keywords, and how often they were searched for. This will give you an idea of the demand that exists for those words.

Wordtracker is a very useful keyword research service which I use, as do many search engine specialists.

Next, go to Google and do a search for your keywords. Make a note of the number of pages that match your search. This will give you a broad indication of the supply for your keywords. The idea here is to choose keywords with a relatively high demand and low supply ratio.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are special code contained within the Head tag of an HTML page to assist search engines index your site. The most important of these are the Title tag and Meta Description tag.

The title tag is your page title. It's what shows at the very top of a browser window and is the clickable link in search engine result pages (SERPs).

The description tag is where you enter a summary of what the page is about. Many search engines will include this summary when displaying the results of a search. You should include your important keywords in the description tag but don't just list your keywords. Your description tag will be read by actual humans so it should attempt to "get the click" by offering a compelling description of your page.

The other main meta tag which is commonly used is the keywords tag. In days gone by, search engine optimisation consisted of stuffing as many keywords in this tag as you could. That stopped working years ago. Because of widespread abuse most search engines ignore this tag altogether, or at best, give it very little weighting. Never the less, it doesn't hurt to include your most important keywords, but be careful not to repeat a keyword more than about 3 times and try to ensure that the keyword exists in the text on your site. You might also like to include common misspellings.

Ask an SEO expert just how important meta tags are these days and you will likely get a varied respose. Many will argue that they no longer have a significant influence on rankings and that much more weight is given to incoming links, page authority and many other factors. Never the less, adding them does not take much time and is fundamental to SEO best practice.

Include Your Most Important Keywords in the Page Title

This is the easiest, yet often overlooked way to achieve a higher search engine ranking. How many times have you visited a website with the page title "Acme Pty Ltd" or worse, "Untitled Document"? Very few people will use a search engine to search for your business by name. They will search for the products or services you provide.

Remember, your potential customers are not looking for you. They are looking for information and solutions to their problems. Your page title tells the search engines, as well as your human visitors, exactly what that particular page is about. So it needs to be keyword rich AND offer a compelling reason for a searcher to click on it.

Site Structure - Keyword Hierarchy

The home page of your site should target keywords which represent the "theme" of your site. Pages which link directly off the home page should ideally target categories related to the site theme, and pages which link to those 2nd tier pages would be sub-categories and target very specific phrases.

This "tiered" site structure is explained brilliantly in the Site Build It Action Guide (see day 3). The SBI Action Guide is well worth a read, even if you do not intend using Site Build It (my recommended online site builder) to construct your site. It outlines a proven formula for building successful websites. You can watch the videos, read online or print.

Create Keyword-Rich Pages

Once you've created your list of keywords they should be "scattered" throughout your text. Your keywords should be more prominent at the start of your page, and sprinkled throughout the rest of the page body. They should also be included in your links, headings (H1, H2, H3) and image "alt" tags.

Forget about keyword-density formulas. I've never bothered trying achieve the ideal keyword density. Just use your keywords in a natural manner. Write for humans, not search engines.

Note: Never try to trick search search engines by using deceptive or "spamming" methods such as hidden text and links. Ultimately, this will likely get you banned. The search engines are your friends! Treat them as such. When placing keywords on your site always concentrate on the visible text and use them in an appropriate manner.

Develop Your Links

Your "link popularity" and "link reputation" are factors that have become increasingly important, particularly at Google. These "off-page" factors could even be considered more important than the "on-page" factors. If you are trying to target competitive keywords in Google then you will need to have a lot of incoming links. Why? Google figure that the more incoming links you have, the more relevant your site will be for those keywords.

But, it's not just a numbers game. The quality, trustworthiness and relevancy of your links are far more important. A link from Yahoo's directory, in a relevant category, is worth far more than a link from a free-hosted, low traffic, unrelated site. Inbound links are an extremely important factor, although not the only factor that search engines use to determine how relevant your site is to a particular search term. In fact, there are known to be over 100 factors which Google use to rank your site.

How Do You Get Links?

To encourage "natural" linking to your site you should of course have great content which will make your site "link worthy". Keep in mind as well that these days search engines track user behavior. If a user clicks through to your site from a SERP but immediately clicks the back button because they find a poor quality site, do you think the search engines will notice? Damn straight they will!

So you must always, always create content for your visitor first.

But, sometimes no matter how much content you add those good quality inbound links just never seem to happen. That's when you need to become active and get the ball rolling. Here are my top ways to build links:

Social Bookmarking

These are sites where you bookmark your favorite sites and share those bookmarks with other members. You can also "tag" your bookmarks with keywords, which provides an easy way for other users to find your content.

Easy Bookmarking:

AddThis.com has a free tool which creates a button for your site. This button allows you and your visitors to bookmark your site with all the popular bookmarking sites. I recommend you use them all, but at a minimum, make sure you create bookmarks with StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Spurl, Furl and Magnolia. There are literally hundreds of social bookmarking sites out there. The AddThis button covers the most important ones.

AddThis also lets you create a tool for your browser toolbar so you can easily bookmark any site you are visiting. I recommend you do this as well.

Why?

You can bookmark the pages which link to your site. This increases the link popularity of those pages, which in turn pass link value to you.

Directory Listings

Sometimes free, and other times you'll pay, but directory listings are a good way to establish good quality, relevant inbound links. A great tool for submitting your site to thousands of directories is Brad Callen's Directory Submitter.

I recommend you submit to directories where your site must be reviewed before it is accepted, and editorial standards are high. This establishes trust with the engines. Google know that for your site to be accepted into Yahoo's directory, for example, it must be good quality.

Here's a good list of directories which meet that criteria.

Articles

Write and submit articles to quality article directories such as EzineArticles. You'll get a link from the directory plus links from webmasters and ezine publishers who use your article.

There are a lot of article directories who publish articles with no editorial review, and I've seen some absolute rubbish published. Don't bother with these directories. If you write a good quality article it will get syndicated and your links will grow.

Plus, because EzineArticles is an authoritive and trusted site, your published articles will rank well in the search engines and drive targeted traffic to your site. Learn more about writing articles here.

Testimonials

Write testimonials on products you've purchased (good ones of course) and send them to the respective webmasters. Use their contact forms or you could even snail-mail them. Tell them you're happy for them to publish your testimonial but would they mind including a link back to your site.

Post to Discussion Forums and Blogs

Many forums and blogs allow you to include a link to your site when you make a post or add a comment to a blog. Never spam by making a post that is nothing more than a link to your site or you'll find yourself unwelcome or even banned.

Contribute to the discussion by posting advice and on-topic comments. Help the owner of that blog by adding to the high quality content on that page. This will help it rank better in the search engines and in turn provide more link value and direct traffic to you.

The "Nofollow" Tag

Many blogs by default apply a special tag to comment links called the "nofollow" tag. This is designed to tackle comment spam by telling the search engines not to pass value for the link.

You can tell if a blog is using this tag by viewing the page source code (right-click, view source). When Notepad opens select Edit/Find and enter "nofollow" in the search box.

Keep in mind though that even if the blog does use the nofollow tag you can still get direct, targeted traffic from your link, so it can still be worthwhile doing.

Commenting Tips:

• only post quality comments - never spam!
• once your comment has been accepted, bookmark the page to all the major bookmarking sites using AddThis.com and ping it. This ensures maximum exposure and link value for that page, and your link.
• use Google Alerts to notify you when blogs are published which relate to your targeted keywords.

Link Exchanges

Many SEO experts will tell you otherwise, but for me exchanging links is still a worthwhile endeavor. But, it must be done the right way. Doing it the wrong way can actually harm you, or at best waste a lot of your time.

Link exchanging these days is not just about "you link to me and I'll link to you". It's about exchanging valuable content. It's about creating valuable resources for the benefit of your users, not just the search engines.

Linking Will Always Be Crucial to Higher Search Engine Ranking

The Internet was built around the concept of linking. Before search engines came along, it was the only way to network your site with other sites in the same realm of interest, and attract targeted visitors.

Search engines like Google recognise the power of linking in establishing trust and authority. It's all very well for you to say your site is relevant for a particular search, but it is far more powerful when other sites, who themselves are trusted and relevant, point to your site.

But search engines also know that linking can be abused. Align your site with their objective of delivering high quality, trusted, authoritive and relevant sites for their users, and you can't go wrong.

You will get the best results when you build links from a wide variety of sources using a combination of strategies. Build your links in a progressive manner, and remember, good quality links (even reciprocal links) will bring targeted traffic themselves.

Start Blogging

Have you started a blog (web log) yet? Now's the time to get started! Blogging has many advantages including fresh, frequently-updated content (the search engines like this) and connecting on a more emotional level with existing and potential customers.

But the biggest advantage from an SEO perspective is it gives you the ability to tap into "Web 2.0" sites, build quality inbound links and distribute your content far more effectively than with a static site.

I have used both Blogger and WordPress to to create blogs. WordPress is way better.

Note: Both Blogger and Wordpress offer free-hosted services. Do NOT choose these options. Either set up a separate hosting account (domain names and hosting accounts are very inexpensive these days), or host the blog on your existing website.

Blogging Tips:

• burn your blog feed at FeedBurner
• ping after every post
• put the AddThis.com button on your blog
• create Technorati tags using relevant keywords at the end of each post. Here is the code (switch to HTML mode, copy and past, substituting your keywords):

Submitting Your Site to the Search Engines

Although the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN provide a URL where you can submit your site it's not actually necessary to do so. Why? As long as your site has incoming links from sites which are already indexed, the search engines will find you. Submit your site if it makes you feel better, but it won't get your site indexed any quicker!

WARNING: beware of services that promise to submit your site to "thousands" of search engines. This usually involves an automated submission to FFA (Free For All) sites. These sites will bring you nothing but spam (junk email) by the truckload. Submitting to the hundreds of little known search engines is largely a waste of time. Or money, if you pay to do it.

Submitting to directories, however, is a different matter. A directory is different to a search engine in that your submission is reviewed by a real live human, whereas search engines use software called spiders to crawl your site.

Again, you don't need to pay third parties to do this. Most of the better directories charge a one-time fee of between $20 to $50 (US) while major directories like Yahoo! charge several hundred dollars. But even the free ones are worth submitting to, especially if it is a directory that is related to your industry.

SiteSell's free Search It tool has a useful feature that allows you to search for specific "hub" directories.

Paid for Inclusion & Pay-per-Click

In recent years some search engines and have moved from "free" to a "pay for inclusion" or "pay per click" business model.

Most of the major search engines now separate their paid, or sponsored listings from their general search results (SERPs - Search Engine Results Pages). Overture (now owned by Yahoo!) pioneered pay-per-click. With Overture, where you rank on your chosen keywords depends on how much you "bid" for each click.

Google use a system called AdWords for their sponsored listings. With AdWords, you also bid on your keywords but other factors such as your click-through rate are taken into account to determine where you rank.

If you'd like to learn more about AdWords I recommend Perry Marshall's excellent book, the definitive guide to Google AdWords.

Summary

Whether you are trying to get an existing website to rank higher in the search engines, or you are about create a new site, your most important factors are your content and links.

Lots of high quality, keyword-focused, original and informative content related to the theme of your your site, and relevant inbound links from trusted sites, will make important search engines like Google love your site.

Before writing or updating your content research your keywords using tools like Keywords Analyzer or Wordtracker and write to please both the search engines and your visitor. After all, what good is a highly optimised site attracting tons of traffic if your text does not make sense to your human visitors or compel them to buy? Remember, search engines don't buy anything, customers do!

Update your content often. This is most important. The search engines favor active, growing sites with fresh content.

Start a link building campaign as soon as your site is published. There are many ways to get links. Be creative, active and build your links in a natural, progressive way. Don't try to acquire hundreds of links all at once. This appears un-natural to search engines and you could be penalised.

Advanced SEO Training & Resources

The SEO Mindset is a comprehensive 127 page guide on long-term strategies for getting and keeping top rankings in the search engines. Written by search engine expert Brad Callen it covers pretty much everything you need to know about SEO. Highly recommended, and good value.

Aaron Wall's SEOBook is one of the most respected resources on SEO tips, strategies and online marketing on the Web. If you want to learn everything about SEO - and I mean EVERYTHING - this is the one for you!

Other Top SEO Resources:

• High Rankings Forum
• Eric Ward's Blog
• Matt Cutts Blog
• Search Engine Land
• SEO Global Network

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